IN LEIPZIGa 

[London,] 4 May 1866 

My dear Friend, 

As I am at this moment, after so long an interruption of work,> 
very busily engaged in making up for lost time, you will excuse me 
for writing this time only a few lines. 

I shall send you to-day the last number of The Commonwealth. 
The financial position of the paper is such that it struggles from 
week to week and is altogether disabled from paying one farthing 
for Foreign Correspondence. Its circulation is increasing, but you 
know that a penny paper wants at least 20,000 subscribers, and 
cannot even then make the two ends meet without a goodly 
number of advertisements. The Commonwealth is of too recent an 
origin to come up to those requisites. 

The Congress at Geneva has been postponed for the 3d of 
September next.”*° The society is rapidly spreading, particularly in 
France. Italian societies have also recently joined.“ The propagan- 

a The letter bears the stamp: International Working Men’s Association / Central 
Council / London. - > on Capital - © See this volume, p. 47. 

da in London has taken a new start, principally due to the 
circumstance that the successful strikes of the London tailors and 
wireworkers were due to our intervention which prevented the 
import of workingmen from France, Switzerland, Belgium, which 
had been contemplated by the masters. This proof of its 
immediate practical importance has struck the practical English 
mind.*”° 

For the same purpose you find, on the last page of this letter, 
an ‘avis’* to the German tailors which J call upon you to have 
inserted in such German papers as you have access to.*”’ At the 
same time you will oblige me by sending me a copy or two of some 
papers in which the ‘avis’ will have been inserted, telling me at the 
same time the names of all other papers that should have 
reprinted it. Kugelmann might also be useful for this purpose. 

My best compliments to Mrs. Liebknecht.? I feel exceedingly 
thankful for her friendly interest in my welfare. 

Yours fraternally 
A. Williams‘