n agents with their orders fell due, had to be renewed, and
began to be held in disfavor. Agents of the North, getting wind of
these hitches in negotiations, eagerly sought to take over the unpaid
Confederate orders. All these details of the situation help to explain
the jubilant tone of this dispatch from Brussels late in November, 1861:

"I have now in my hands complete control of the principal rebel
contracts on the continent, viz.: 206,000 yards of cloth ready for
delivery, already commencing to move forward to Havre; gray but can
be dyed blue in twenty days; 100,000 yards deliverable from 15th of
December to 26th of January, light blue army cloth, same as ours;
100,000 blankets; 40,000 guns to be shipped in ten days; 20,000 saber
bayonets to be delivered in six weeks.... The winter clothing for
100,000 men taken out of their hands, when they cannot replace it, would
almost compensate for Bull Run. There is no considerable amount of cloth
to be had in Europe; the stocks are very short."

The Secretary of War was as devoid of ideas as the Secretary of the
Treasury was and even less equipped with resisting power. Though he
could not undo the work already done by the agents of the Government
abroad, he gave way as rapidly as possible to the allied parasites whose
headquarters, at the moment, were in Boston. The story grows uglier
as we proceed. Two powerful commercial combinations took charge of the
policy of the woolen interests--the National Woolgrowers' Association
and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, which were soon in
control of this immense industry. Woolen mills sprang up so fast that
a report of the New York Chamber of Commerce pronounced their increase
"scarcely credible." So great was the new market created by the
Government demand, and so ruthless were the parasites in forcing up
prices, that dividends on mill stock rose to 10, 15, 25, and even 40 per
cent. And all the while the wool growers and the wool manufacturers were
clamoring to Congress for protection of the home industry, exclusion
of the wicked foreign competition, and all in the name of their devoted
"patriotism"--patriotism with a dividend of 40 per cent!

Of course, it is not meant that every wool grower and every woolen
manufacturer was either a "disloyal" or a parasite. By no means. Numbers
of them were to be found in that great host of "loyals" who put their
dividends into government bonds and gave their services unpaid as
au