At the time of greatest distress some 412,000 of these were receiving either public or private aid, though many were working part-time in the mills or were engaged on public enterprises set on foot to ease the crisis.

But there was no starvation and it is absurd to compare the crisis to the Irish famine of the 'forties.

This was a _cotton_ famine in the shortage of that commodity, but it was not a _human_ famine.

The country, wrote John Bright, was passing through a terrible crisis, but "our people will be kept alive by the contributions of the country[681]." Nevertheless a rapid change from a condition 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.