London, 19 January 1885 

Dear Bebel, 

I hope you have had my last registered letter concerning the mat- 
ter of the Steamship Bill (of 30 or 31 December).* Today I must trou- 
ble you with an inquiry. Mr Franz Mehring has now written to me 
for the second time asking me to place at his disposal material for 
a biography, etc., of Marx and, amongst other things, has the nerve 
to presume that I send him ‘on loan’ to Berlin irreplaceable editions 
of ours which he is unable to procure over there! I shall not reply, but 
send a message via Hirsch. But if I am to strike the right note, I ought 
to know something more definite about his past and present and 
about his attitude towards the party. Generally speaking, all I know 
is that, some time before 1878, he was pretty roundly taken to task in 
the Volksstaat and the Vorwdérts for being a reptile °°? and a defector 
from the party and, from the few writings of his which have fallen into 
my hands, I have seen that he was making literary use of such in- 
timate knowledge as he had of the movement to dole out liberal 
portions of ‘truth and fiction’ about it to your philistine, and 
to pass himself off as an authority in such matters. If he has done 
anything especially underhand that might single him out from the 
rest of the literary rabble, it would be most helpful for me to 
know it.3°* 

Then there’s another thing. I am being strongly urged to bring out 
a new edition of my Condition of the Working-Class. I can do absolutely 
nothing about it before finding out what my legal position 1s in regard 
to Wigand, the previous publisher. I have asked Liebknecht about 
this umpteen times, and on each occasion he has undertaken to ob- 
tain the information for me from Freytag, but none has ever been 
forthcoming. And who was the first to express surprise that nothing 
had been settled? Why, Liebknecht, of course. Now since it would'be 

* See this volume, pp. 240-43. - ° ‘Wahrheit und Dichtung’ in the original, which is 
a paraphrase of the title of Goethe’s autobiographical book Dichtung und Wahrheit, 
‘Dichtung’ meaning ‘poetry, fiction’. 

folly to entrust him with any further errands, I must once again 
bother you, and ask you to obtain for me from Freytag, or some other 
Saxon advocate, a reply to the enclosed questions. As soon as I have 
that reply I can, and intend to, proceed. 

To return to Germany’s industrial position, I readily concede that 
enormous progress has been made since 1866, and more especially 
since 1871. But the contrast with other countries still remains, none- 
theless. England had had the monopoly of mass-produced articles 
and France that of the finer luxury and fashion goods, and in this re- 
spect there has not, after all, been any change worth mentioning. In 
iron, it is true, Germany is, together with America, second only to 
England; but she is very far from attaining the level of English mass- 
production and can only hope to compete by selling at @ loss. In cot- 
ton, Germany manufactures only subsidiary articles for the world 
market. The massive quantities of yarn and other woven goods (suirt- 
ics and other mass-produced articles) for the Indian and Chinese 
market are still an English monopoly, and such competition as there 
may be in this sphere comes, not from Germany but from America. 
In woollen goods, too, England still dominates the world market, 
ditto in linen (Ireland). Birmingham is still the centre for hardware 
for domestic use, etc., as Sheffield is for cutlery, and the great- 
est threat of competition is still posed by America, not Germany. 
Machinery (with the exception of locomotives), England and 
America. 

In the matter of fashion goods, France has lost a lot of ground. 
Here, too, fashion has changed considerably, and this certainly ap-- 
plies to Germany also. Both countries, however, and Germany in par- 
ticular, produce in the main 2nd, 3rd and 4th class goods and still to 
a large extent depend on the Paris fashions. Meanwhile it is obvious 
that, in the case of buyers who consist almost exclusively of parvenus, 
2nd and 3rd class articles play a considerable role and can be sold to 
these boors as \st class goods. 

One thing, however, is certain: the large bulk of German exports 
is composed of a mass of what, seen individually, are more or less in- 
significant articles, the manufacture of which, in so far as fashion 
comes into it, depends largely on the theft of Parisian patterns — 
e.g. the women’s coat trade in Berlin-—— as is openly admitted in the 
Kolmsche Keitung. Moreover, foreign cloth is largely used for the 
purpose.