Marx-Engels Correspondence 1851

Marx To Joseph Weydemeyer
In New York


Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 480;
First published: (without Jenny Marx’s postscript) in: Marx and Engels Works, 1934 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1962;


London, 16 October 1851, 28 Dean Street, Soho

Dear Weydemeyer,

Not only have I myself written to A. Charles Dana, one of the editors of the New York Tribune, but I have sent him a letter of introduction for you from Freiligrath. So all you have to do is to call on him and mention our names.

You ask about a statistical manual. I would recommend — since it also contains economic expositions — the Commercial Dictionary by MacCulloch, 1845. There are more recent things, e.g., by MacGregor, whose works on statistics are, generally speaking, probably the best so far as Europe as a whole is concerned. But they are very dear. However, you will certainly find them in one of the New York libraries. MacCulloch, on the other hand, is a manual which every journalist ought to possess.

On England, specially to be recommended: Porter, The Progress of the Notion. New edition, 1851.

On the history of commerce generally:

Tooke. History of Prices, three vols. Up to 1848. On North America, especially MacGregor, who has written a statistical study of the United States.

On Germany: Freiherr von Reden: Vergleichende Kulturstatistik. On France: Moreau.

Now I have another commission for you. At the request of Koch, a former German Catholic priest, whom you may inquire after at the Staatszeitung, for which he writes front time to time, I sent him 20 Manifestos (in German) and one English translation of the same, instructing him to have it — the English translation — printed in pamphlet form, along with Harney’s introductory note. Since that time there hasn’t been a word from Mr Koch. Please ask him, 1) for an explanation of this most suspect silence, after he had written to me so urgently, and 2) get him to give you the English translation and see if you can dispose of it in pamphlet form, i.e. if you can publish, distribute and sell it. Needless to say, any proceeds there may be will go to you, but we should like to have 20-50 copies for ourselves.

Dronke is coming here on the 23rd inst.

Write soon. Regards to you and your wife from my wife, myself and all friends.

I hope that you have weathered the voyage successfully and that things will go well with you in the United States.


Your
K. Marx

[From Mrs Jenny Marx]

Tell your dear wife that, during this time, I have been thinking of her with heartfelt sympathy and concern. What must she have endured on the long sea voyage with two small children! I hope these lines will not reach New York too long before yourselves. I feel sure that you will manage to make a provisional home for yourselves there.

We have had no news of Edgar [von Westphalen] since his departure in April. He left Bremen on the sailing vessel Reform, Captain Ammerman, intending to disembark at Galveston and stay, to begin with, in New Braunfels. Perhaps, dear Mr Weydemeyer, it might he possible for you to track him down somewhere from New York. His silence is all the more incomprehensible as he knows that, because of the paralysis of her right hand, our poor, lonely little mama [Caroline von Westphalen] has been deprived of the last solace fate has left her — to communicate in writing with those she loves most.

Farewell, and warm regards from

Jenny Marx