s on
Distress in the Manufacturing Districts," 1862. _Parliamentary Papers,
Commons_, Vol. XLIX, Pt. I, 1863. _Ibid._, Vol. LII, 1864; and (2) from
"Summary of the Number of Paupers in the Distressed Districts," from
November, 1861, to December, 1863. _Commons_, Vol. LII. Farnall's
reports are less exact than the _Summary_ since at times Liverpool is
included, at times not, as also six small poor-law unions which do not
appear in his reports until 1864. The _Summary_ consistently includes
Liverpool, and fluctuates violently for that city whenever weather
conditions interfered with the ordinary business of the port. It is a
striking illustration of the narrow margin of living wages among the
dockers of Liverpool that an annotation at the foot of a column of
statistics should explain an increase in one week of 21,000 persons
thrown on poor relief to the "prevalence of a strong east wind" which
prevented vessels from getting up to the docks.]

[Footnote 681: Trevelyan, _Bright_, p. 309. To Sumner, Dec. 6, 1862.]

[Footnote 682: The historians who see only economic causes have
misinterpreted the effects on policy of the "cotton famine." Recently,
also, there has been advanced an argument that "wheat defeated
cotton"--an idea put forward indeed in England itself during the war by
pro-Northern friends who pointed to the great flow of wheat from the
North as essential in a short-crop situation in Great Britain. Mr.
Schmidt in "The Influence of Wheat and Cotton on Anglo-American
Relations during the Civil War," a paper read before the American
Historical Association, Dec. 1917, and since published in the _Iowa
Journal of History and Politics_, July, 1918, presents with much care
all the important statistics for both commodities, but his conclusions
seem to me wholly erroneous. He states that "Great Britain's dependence
on Northern wheat ... operated as a contributing influence in keeping
the British government officially neutral ..." (p. 423), a cautious
statement soon transformed to the positive one that "this fact did not
escape the attention of the English government," since leading journals
referred to it (p. 431). Progressively, it is asserted: "But it was
Northern wheat that may well be regarded as the decisive factor,
counterbalancing the influence of cotton, in keeping the British
government from recognizing the Confederacy" (p. 437). "That the wheat
situation must have exerted a profound influence on the government ..