Published:
First published in 1930 in Lenin Miscellany XIII.
Sent to New York.
Printed from the original.
Source:
Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 271-272.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala
Public Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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Cracow, February 27, 1914
Dear Colleague,
I have long since received your book, Immigration and Labour,[1] and have been looking for your address to send you my thanks. But it proved far from easy to find your address. I got it only today, and hasten to express my gratitude to you for sending me the book. I have already written an article[2] about it, and on the basis of it, in our St. Petersburg Social-Democratic newspaper Pravda, and intend to write again. I believe that this work provides a mass of valuable material for the study of capitalism, being at the same time something of an application of the best methods of our Zemstvo statisticians on Western soil.
The comrade who sent me your address (Mr. John Ellert) has written to tell me that you could use your influence to help obtain all kinds of material from the Bureau of the Census in Washington. May I, therefore, ask you to do me a favour, provided of course that this will not give you too much trouble or interfere with your work.
When I made a study of American agricultural statistics (Vol. V. Agriculture—Census of 1900) in Paris, I found a great deal of interesting matter. Now, in Cracow, I am unable to obtain these publications. Cahan, editor of the Jewish socialist paper in New York,[3] who was over here a year ago, promised to have them sent, but has apparently forgotten to do so.
They say that when requested by the right people the American Bureau of the Census will send its publications free of charge even to foreign countries. If that is so, could you put in a word? (I could send the Bureau of the Census library my books, The Development of Capitalism in Russia and the Agrarian Question.[4]) What I need most is Agriculture, Vol. V, Census of 1900, and the same volume of the Census of 1910 (if that is not yet out, then the bulletins).
If that is impossible, would you be so kind as to send a postcard to Mr. John Ellert (c/o Novy Mir.[5] 140. East 4th Street, New York)—I shall send him the money to buy the things I need most.
I thank you once again for the book, and hope you will pardon the trouble.
With Social-Democratic greetings,
N. Lenin (V. Ulyanov)
Address: Wl. Uljanow. 51. Ulica Lubomirskiego. Krakau (Galizien). Austria.
[1] Isaac A. Hourwich, Immigration and Labour. The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States, New York and London, 1912.
[2] See present edition, Vol. 19, pp. 454–57.
[3] A. Cahan—editor of the New York Jewish socialist newspaper Vorwärts, founded in 1897. The material referred to (Census Reports. Twelfth Census 1900. Vol. V. Agriculture. Washington, 1902. Thirteenth Census of the United States, taken in the year 1910. Vol. V. Agriculture. Washington, 1913) was received from America partially in May 1914 (see present edition, Vol. 35, p. 140) and the rest shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. Lenin used them as a basis for his work: New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture. Part One. Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America (see present edition, Vol. 22, pp. 13–102).
[4] A reference to Lenin’s works: The Development of Capitalism in Russia. The Process of the Formation of a Home Market for Large-Scale Industry (see present edition, Vol. 3) and The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905–07 (see present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 217–431).
[5] Novy Mir (New World)—a Menshevik newspaper published by a group of Russian émigrés in New York from 1911 to 1917. From 1912 to 1916 it was edited by John Ellert (N. N. Nakoryakov).
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