ately to the various recruiting camps and
regiments. With every exertion, this department has not been able to
obtain clothing to supply these demands, and they have been so urgent
that troops before the enemy have been compelled to do picket duty in
the late cold nights without overcoats, or even coats, wearing only thin
summer flannel blouses.... Could 150,000 suits of clothing, overcoats,
coats, and pantaloons be placed today, in depot, it would scarce supply
the calls now before us. They would certainly leave no surplus."

The Government attempted to meet this difficulty in the shortest
possible time by purchasing clothing abroad. But such disregard of home
industry, the "patriotism" of the New England manufacturers could not
endure. Along with the report just quoted, the Quartermaster-General
forwarded to the Secretary of War a long argumentative protest from
a committee of the Boston Board of Trade against the purchase of army
clothing in Europe. Any American of the present day can guess how
the protest was worded and what arguments were used. Stripped of its
insincerity, it signified this: the cotton mills were inoperative for
lack of material; their owners saw no chance to save their dividends
except by re-equipment as woolen mills; the existing woolen mills also saw
a great chance to force wool upon the market as a substitute for cotton.
In Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, the growers of wool saw
the opportunity with equal clearness. But, one and all, these various
groups of parasites saw that their game hinged on one condition: the
munitions market must be kept open until they were ready to monopolize
government contracts. If soldiers contracted pneumonia doing picket duty
on cold nights, in their summer blouses, that was but an unfortunate
incident of war.

Very different in spirit from the protest of the Boston manufacturers
is a dispatch from the American minister at Brussels which shows what
American public servants, in contrast with American manufacturers, were
about. Abroad the agents of North and South were fighting a commercial
duel in which each strove to monopolize the munitions market. The United
States Navy, seeing things from an angle entirely different from that of
the Boston Board of Trade, ably seconded the ministers by blockading the
Southern ports and by thus preventing the movement of specie and cotton
to Europe. As a consequence, fourmonth notes which had been given by
Souther