Dear Marx, The day before yesterday I sent you the translation [of the first chapter of Marx's 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte] and a post office order for a pound. A few more pounds will follow at the beginning of October i.e. in 9-10 days. I should like to send you more at a time because, then even though the total amount is the same in the end, it has the advantage of enabling you to plan your expenditure more methodically, but my own pecuniary circumstances are in such a muddle just now that I never know exactly how much I shall need for the month, and hence pounds only become available singly, so it seems best to send them to you straight away. Next month I shall put things on a business-like footing, after which I shall soon be able to make some rough estimates. From the enclosed memorandum you will see that Pieper has made a number of fairly bad howlers I haven t, of course, enumerated his transgressions against grammar and Donatus, cela n'aurait jamais fini. You may give it to him if you think it would do any good; otherwise, if it might lead him to abandon the translation, you had better keep it. Should he grumble over this or that correction, you can always use it as an opportunity to point out his imperfections. Individual bits are, by the way, almost untranslatable. Incidentally, it might also be advisable for the bookseller to see the last chapter in particular; he would then be vastly more impressed; I suggest that Pieper might translate it and you send it straight on to me; having already looked at it with this in mind, I am not wholly unprepared and progress would therefore be rapid. Even if it can t be published now, the translation must be completed; the chap will soon become Emperor, and that would provide another splendid opportunity for adding a postscript. I am going straight home to finish the article for the Tribune so that it catches the 2nd post and you can send it off by tomorrow s steamer. What prospect is there of a new English article for Dana? I trust the brandy has set your wife on her feet again warm regards to her and your children, also Dronke and Lupus. Massol s letter with the article for Dana by the 2nd post I haven t got it here. Did you see the statistics from Horner, the factory inspector, on the growth of the cotton industry in yesterday s Times and day-before-yesterday s Daily News? and the cotton industry alone. The following particulars reveal that during that period there were factories still under construction which would require some 4,000 horsepower and which will now have been completed. Since that time, work has undoubtedly begun on factories of 3,000-4,000 horsepower, more than half of which might be completed by the end of the year; if we assume that the increase between Jan. 1848 and Oct. 1850, i.e. 2 3/4 years, is no more than 4,000 horsepower, the steam-power of the Lancashire cotton industry will have risen between 1848 and the end of 1852 by 3,700+4,000+1,500+4,000=13,200 horsepower. In 1842 the total steam-power of the cotton industry in Lancashire amounted to 30,000 and in 1845 (end) to 40,000 horsepower; in 1846/47 there was little installed, hence almost 55,000 horsepower, nearly twice that of 1842, will now be in use. On top of that there is hydraulic power about 10,000 horsepower (1842) which has barely increased, hydraulic energy having been fairly well exploited for some time past. From this it may be seen where prosperity s additional capital has gone. For that matter the crisis cannot be very far off, although here excess over-speculation is almost entirely confined to omnibuses. Memorandum on the Translation of the 1st Chapter All these are things which Pieper, if only he paid a little attention, would know as well as I do but, as already mentioned, it is easier to translate difficult things oneself than to correct a translation that is carelessly thrown together and dodges the difficulties. If he tried a little harder, he could translate quite well.
Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1852