[Draft] 

Bridlington Quay, 
15 August 1881 

Dear Mr Shipton, 

I cannot make it out, how you could so strangely misunderstand 
Mr Kautsky’s article.'’* To the first passage you objected because 
State interference went against the grain of ‘many prominent men in 
the Unions’. Of course it does, because they are at heart Manchester 
School ! men and so long as their opinions of such are taken into ac- 
count, no working-class paper is possible. But my addition to the 
passage in question must have convinced you, that the State interfer- 
ence here alluded to, was such, and such only, as has been in England 
the law of the Land for years: factories and workshops’ acts,?”?’ and 
nothing further: things not objected to by even your ‘prominent 
men’. 

As to the second passage, Mr Kautsky says: an international regu- 
lation of the war of competition is as necessary as that of open warfare; we 
demand a Geneva Convention for the workpeople of the world. The 
‘Geneva Convention’ is an agreement entered into by the various Gov- 
ernments for the protection of wounded and ambulances in battle. 
What therefore Mr Kautsky demands, is a similar agreement be- 
tween the various Governments for the protection of the workpeople not 
of one state only, but of all, against overwork especially of women and 

* Carl Hirsch 

children. How out of that you can make an appeal to the workpeople of 
the world to meet in a Convention of delegates at Geneva, | am utterly at 
a loss to understand.* 

You will own that the occurrence of such misunderstanding on 
your part cannot at all encourage me to alter my resolution.” 

As to the Hirsch article,'7* I do know Mr Eccarius and only too 
well for a traitor to the cause and it will be utterly impossible for me 
to write for a paper which opens its columns to him. 

Moreover, I do not see any progress. The Labour Standard remains 
the same vehicle of the most various and mutually contradictory 
views on all political and social questions which it was, perhaps una- 
voidably, on the first day of its existence, but which it ought no longer 
to be by this time, if there was an undercurrent among the British 
working class tending towards emancipation from the liberal Capital- 
ists. Such undercurrent not being shown itself up to now, I must con- 
clude it does not exist. If there were unmistakable signs of its exis- 
tence, I might make an extra effort to assist it. But I do not think that 
one column a week drowned as I might say amongst the remaining 
multifarious opinions represented in The Labour Standard could do 
anything towards producing it. 

And as I told you, I had resolved to stop writing after the Trade 
Unions Congress, '7> because of want of time; so whether I write a few 
articles more till then, would make no difference. 

So waiting and hoping for better times, I remain 

Faithfully yours, 
F. E.