London, 30 December 1872 

Dear Hepner, 

[...] and provides a direct refutation of Sybel,* in such a way, 
moreover, as presupposes independent and quite accurate thought 
of his own. Both Marx and I were delighted with the article,” even 
though it contains minor inexactitudes here and there. Of course, 
I was not in a position to know what Schramm is like otherwise, 
but he certainly knows his economics. 

4. In contrast, of the two articles on the ‘Revival of the Reform 
Movement’ the first is good, while the second is in direct conflict 
with the facts. The many wretched little congresses, which are 
taken seriously in this article only because they are taken seriously 
by The Bee-Hive, which has sold out to the bourgeoisie, have no 
other purpose than as preparations for the impending parliamen- 
tary elections. All the reform leagues listed in the article are of 
absolutely no importance and, moreover, consist, for the most 
part, of the very same people. And what people? With a few 
exceptions, they consist of the labour leaders whom Marx branded 
as corrupt at The Hague!” It is impossible to judge the 
movement here from over there, taking The Bee-Hive and 
Reynolds’s as your guides. The fact that a few TRADES UNIONISTS attend 
such congresses does not mean that the Trades unions are thinking 
of becoming political, which they (at least most of them, including 
the biggest ones) couwldn’t do at all without totally revising their 
rules. [...In] reality the movement here is lousier than ever, as is 
only to be expected with such industrial prosperity. 

[...] Whenever we send [articles] or pamphlets to Spain, [Italy] 
or elsewhere, we regularly receive in return a number of copies of 
them, without our asking for them, and a further quantity is put at 
our disposal, as is indeed right and proper. The only administra- 
tion that makes an exception here is that of the Volksstaat. I had to 

aH. Sybel, Die Lehren des  heutigen Socialismus und Kommunismus. - 
b C. A. S[chramm], ‘Der Tauschwerth’, Der Volksstaat, No. 82, 12 October 
1872. - © ‘Der Wiederbeginn der Reformbewegung in England’. I, II, Der Volksstaat, 
Nos. 98 and 102, 7 and 21 December 1872. 

buy a copy of my Peasant War’ myself. As for my Housing Question, 
I see Part I announced daily in the Volksstaat, but do not have even 
a single complete copy here to enable me to reply to Mülberger,” 
since Frankel had managed to mislay the copy of the Volksstaat 
which contained the concluding section, and the offprint sent to 
me had the last page missing! If Marx had not finally succeeded in 
finding his copy of the issue in question, I would have been quite 
unable to reply. I would put a lot of this down to sheer 
carelessness, e.g. the fact that a bill was‘sent to me for the copies 
of the Manifesto‘; but in the long run it is going too far, and if a 
stop is not put to this truly shoddy treatment of us soon, the 
Volksstaat will have no reason to be surprised if one fine day Marx 
and I simply go on strike. It just will not do for us to have to beg 
for free copies or buy from the bookseller our own things which 
we have let you have for nothing. People in other countries 
immediately send us copies of all pamphlets, etc., because they 
know full well that we do more to publicise them and make them 
known [...] is not expressly requested.