Manchester, 9 April 1858 

Dear Moor, 

The study of your assrracr of the first half-instalment* has 
greatly exercised me; IT Is A VERY ABSTRACT ABSTRACT INDEED—inevitably 
so, in view of its brevity,—and I often had to search hard for the 
dialectical transitions, particularly since ALL ABSTRACT REASONING is NOW 
completely foreign to me. The arrangement of the whole into 6 
books could hardly be better and seems to me an excellent idea, 
although the dialectical transition from landed property to wage 
labour is not yet quite clear to me. The development of the 
monetary business, too, is really excellent, though again there are 
individual bits I can’t quite make out, at least until I have looked 
up the historical background. However, I think that I shall get a 
better idea of the vrirr when I’ve had the last part of capital in 
general, and shall then write to you at greater length about it. The 
abstract, dialectical tone of your synopsis will, of course, disappear 
in the development. 

Yesterday I sent you two more Guardians. Now that the price 
has been reduced to 1d, the chaps are evidently cutting down on 
all expenses such as foreign correspondents, etc. Their attempt to 
produce a FIRST-CLASS PROVINCIAL PAPER failed completely. Hence the 
dearth of foreign news and the rarity of contributions from Paris. 

2 K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 

The thing about Fould in yesterday’s Guardian isn’t bad. But 
what’s even better is the Corron Suppty Association's *' report. How 
splendid that, 10 years after its introduction, Free Trane” should 
be repudiated outright by the free traders themselves. For all that 
this Corron Surety Association amounts to is an institution set up by 
these selfsame free traders with the object of boosting the 
cultivation of cotton everywhere in the world where soil and 
climate are not entirely unsuitable—and this, in direct opposition 
tO FREE TRADE principles, by means of rewards, advances, gifts of 
seed, loans of machinery, etc., etc. If the State does something of 
this sort, it’s all wrong, but if the Manchester CorTon spinners, who 
are much further removed from the niccers, Bedouins, etc., in 
Africa than their own monarch, do the selfsame thing, then 17s aL 
ricut. This report is as pretty a satire on laissez-faire” clap-trap 
generally as one could hope to find. Very pretty, too, the 
admission that the import of English goods manufactured from 
American cotton has disrupted cotton cultivation in almost all 
other countries and that this last will now have to be restored by 
artificial means! These wretched English regard their monopoly in 
cotton spinning and weaving as something fine and natural to 
which no one could object; whereas the cotton-growing monopoly 
of the United States, engendered by the selfsame world market, 
must be smashed, even if this means ANTI-FREE TRADE measures. The 
thing ought to be called * Association for enabling the single 
spinners to buy cotton in the dearest market, the collective 
spinners paying the producer the difference between the market 
value and his cost of production *. Of course, this is to go on only 
until subsidised cotton growing can stand on its own legs; but after 
all that is exactly what Monsieur List is also seeking to do with his 
protective tariffs! The thing might supply you with material for an 
article, since the Yankees have a direct interest in it and the 
Tribune, too, 18 ANTI-FREE TRADE, 

My prognostications that fluctuations in produce would be 
entirely dependent on the east and west winds and that, with 
Mippiinc Orieans corton above 6d, there could be no question of 
trade being either normal or brisk, have proved remarkably 
accurate.” As regards cotton, the fulfilment of my first prognosti- 
cation will be apparent from the enclosed table which is a 
continuation of the one I sent you earlier on the price of Middling 
Orleans, and brings it up to date.” Sugar, coffee and tea have gone 

a See this volume, pp. 202, 213, 235-36, 239-40. - > Ibid., p. 205. The continuation of 
the table is not extant. 

306 : 159. Engels to Marx. 9 April 1858 

the same way, save that the existence of considerable stocks 
inhibited the temporary .steep rise which the shortage of stocks 
made possible in the case of cotton. As for the second 
prognostication, there’s still quite a lot of short Time, strikes, and 
stoppages due to unprofitable production and, since the crop will 
provide 3,000 M* bales whereas full production would now 
demand a minimum of 3,500 M (same ratio for other cotton 
producing countries), any attempt at revival by the cotton industry 
up to the end of this year will be hampered—quite aside from 
political convulsions—by the rising price of raw material, as 
indeed already happened at the end of February and the 
beginning of March (see table). Prices in general—even though 
there may be an initial fall—will rise, but at the same time there 
will be a check to production proportionate to the rise. This, always. 
SUPPOSING THAT [THERE IS] NO ROW ON THE Continent, though the latter is a 
virtual certainty. 

In one week, 19-26 February, only 62 bales of cotton of all 
qualities arrived in Liverpool! Normally they are counted in 
thousands. . 

What’s this about the 300 million francs which are admitted to 
have vanished? All I remember having read is that, instead of a 
surplus of 40 million, Magne has a deficit—but I don’t know the 
details. It really is priceless. Now the ‘prince impérial” is also to 
be given his own household and a dotation—casu MUST BE DEVILISH 
SCARCE! 

I hope your bilious trouble is better. Obviously all this excitation 
caused by the crisis is to blame. In the evenings I am sometimes 
plagued by toothache as a result of the weather; but nothing 
worse. 

Kind regards to your wife and children. 

Your 
F. E.