tion of adequate wage-earning to one of dependence on charity--a
change ultimately felt by the great bulk of those either directly or
indirectly dependent upon the cotton industry--might have been expected
to arouse popular demonstrations to force governmental action directed
to securing cotton that trade might revive. That no such popular effect
was made demands careful analysis--to be offered in a later chapter--but
here the _fact_ is alone important, and the fact was that the operatives
sympathized with the North and put no pressure on the Cabinet. Thus at
no time during the war was there any attempt from Lancashire, whether of
manufacturers or operatives, to force a change of governmental
policy[682].

As the lack of employment developed in Lancashire public discussion and
consideration were inevitably aroused. But there was little talk of
governmental interference and such as did appear was promptly met with
opposition by the leading trade journals. July 13, 1861, the _Economist_
viewed the cotton shortage as "a _temporary_ and an _immediate_ one....
We have--on our hypothesis--to provide against the stoppage of our
supply for _one_ year, and that the very _next_ year." Would it _pay_,
asked Bright, to break the blockade? "I don't think myself it would be
cheap ... at the cost of a war with the United States[683]." This was
also the notion of the London _Shipping Gazette_ which, while
acknowledging that the mill-owners of England and France were about to
be greatly embarrassed, continued: "_But we are not going to add to the
difficulty by involving ourselves in a naval war with the Northern
States_[684]...." The _Times_ commented in substance in several issues
in September, 1861, on the "wise policy of working short-time as a
precaution against the contingencies of the cotton supply, and of the
glutted state of distant markets for manufactured goods[685]." October
12, the _Economist_ acknowledged that the impatience of some mill-owners
was quite understandable as was talk of a European compulsion on America
to stop an "objectless and hopeless" quarrel, but then entered upon an
elaborate discussion of the principles involved and demonstrated why
England ought not to intervene. In November Bright could write: "The
notion of getting cotton by interfering with the blockade is abandoned
apparently by the simpletons who once entertained it, and it is accepted
now as a fixed policy that we are to take no part in your
diff