The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-08
From the Kansas City Star

From the Kansas City Star.
 N MAN writing from Sedalia, Mo,
 N\ asks the Star: 'Is it not true that G S the English people were strongly opposed to the northern side in our civil war? Is it not true that they wanted to jump into the war on the side of the south so as to dismember the United States and weaken it as nation and thus fatten on the feast of our ruin?'
 An interesting subject at this time
 The south believed that if it seeded the north would blockade it's ports. This would shut off the exportation of cotton to English mills. They would have to close, and this would send up such a ground swell from the workers in Eng fish cotton mills that England would have to interfere on behalf of the south. and thus the war would be over within a year, with the southern states inde- pendent.
 Would any sane nation make war on cotton?" exclaimed Senator Hammond of South Carolina in his famous speech in the Senate in 1858. The south could bring the whole world to our feet. If no cotton were furnished for three years England would topple head-long and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war upon cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king"
 Mrs. Davis writes in her biography that President Davis of the Southern Confed- eracy and his advisers looked to the blockade and shutting down of English cotton mills to compel recognition; and, without a firm conviction that this would have happened. secession would never have come, for the southern leaders never believed they could win without foreign help.
 Tho blockade did cause great cotton famine in England. where cotton manu- facture supported an important share of the population. England consumed a thousand million pounds of cotton year and exported nearly three billion yards of cloth. It had 250 cotton factories. which employed a half million operatives. Eghty-four per cent of tho cotton used in England came from America. By tho close of 1882 one quarter of g million operatives were out of work in England, and nearly a half million of them were living on charity. and 25 per cent of the entire population of Eng land was affected. The cotton famine cost England ssso.o 1000. not including s2o, 900, GOO given in charity to cotton miV hands out of work. Many owners of cot ton factories lost all they had.
 This famine, which lasted nearly four years, could have been ended at any tine by the lifting of the blockade of south ern ports, which would have let the cot ton flow to the English mills. and some English statesmen were in favor of Inter- ference. In France there was much Restitution also because of the blockade and Louis Napoleon asked Russia and England to join him in tho intervention. Russia. always America's good friend, promptly refused to interfere. Some members of the British cabinet, Lord Palmerston. Earl Russell and Gladstone, thought England ought to intervene, but
 the majority were against it, and the bulR of the English people. even the mill workers. who were almost starving, were bitterly opposed to intervention.
 Charles Francis Adams. our minister in England of that time. wrote: AThe our