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KARL MARX

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LONDON 2 55<br />

sophy from Kant onwards. The articles were to be 'sarcastic and amusing'<br />

and yet to contain 'nothing which would hurt the religious feelings of<br />

the country'. 201 Marx wrote to Engels that if they were together it might<br />

be possible but 'alone I would not wish it', 202 and the matter was not<br />

pursued. In the same year, relations between Marx and the Tribune became<br />

strained: Dana often altered Marx's articles and sometimes took the first<br />

paragraphs of an article to serve as an editorial, printing the rest as a<br />

separate and anonymous article. In all, 165 of the Tribune's editorials were<br />

taken from Marx's articles, though in fact Dana preferred the articles that<br />

(unknown to him) had been written by Engels. Marx insisted that either<br />

all or none of the articles should be signed and after 1855 they were all<br />

printed anonymously. During 1853 the Tribune printed eighty of Marx's<br />

articles and about the same number in 1854, but only forty in 1855 and<br />

twenty-four in 1856. At the beginning of 1857, Marx threatened to write<br />

for another paper since the Tribune, whose panslavist tendencies were<br />

becoming more pronounced, was printing so few of his articles: Dana<br />

thereupon agreed to pay him for one article a week, whether printed or<br />

not.<br />

In April 1857 Dana invited Marx to contribute to the New American<br />

Cyclopaedia. The Cyclopaedia was the idea of George Ripley, a friend of<br />

Dana's since Brook Farm and literary editor of the Tribune. It eventually<br />

comprised sixteen volumes, had more than 300 contributors and was a<br />

tremendous success. A strict objectivity was aimed at, and Dana wrote to<br />

Marx that his articles should not give evidence of any partiality, either on<br />

political, religious or philosophical questions. Although Engels saw in<br />

I )ana's proposition 'the opportunity we have been waiting for for so long<br />

to get your head above water' 203 and constructed schemes for getting a<br />

number of collaborators together, this proved impossible. Marx was asked<br />

to do articles mainly on military history and was severely handicapped<br />

when Engels fell ill with glandular trouble. He could give no plausible<br />

explanation for the embarrassing delays and was reduced to pretending<br />

that the articles had been lost in the post. Most of his contributions were<br />

written in 1857-58, but he continued to send a few until the end of i860.<br />

At two dollars a page it was a useful source of income. The reason for<br />

the end of Marx's collaboration is not known. In all, sixty-seven Marx-<br />

Engels articles were published in the Cyclopaedia, fifty-one of them written<br />

by Engels, though Marx did a certain amount of research for them in the<br />

liritish Museum.<br />

By the end of 1857 the commercial crisis had compelled the Tribune<br />

to dismiss all its foreign correspondents apart from Marx and one other;<br />

and in 1861 Greeley, disturbed by Marx's views, asked Dana to sack him<br />

also. Dana refused, but the publication of further articles by him was

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