In 1862 Karl Marx, short of money as usual, applied for a job as a railway clerk.
His command of the English language was not an issue but his writing was.
He wrote in very small, and even for the period, hard to decipher script.
He was turned down for the job because of his handwriting- not something likely to be an issue in the electronic age of 2023.
It later caused Engels problems when seeking to go through and publish some of Marx’s manuscripts after his death.
For research historians now, with reading hand written letters and documents increasingly less common in the present day, reading archive material written in pen is I suspect becoming increasingly difficult. In fact its surprising the Tories havent started a culture war on it
*picture courtesy of socialist historian Marcello Musto
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