In place of the hard times which had been anticipated, and perhaps deserved, there came a shower of riches[675]." This was written of the situation in December, 1861.

A similar analysis, no doubt on the explanations offered by his English friends, of "the question of cotton supply, which we had supposed would speedily have disturbed the level of their neutral policy" was made by Mason in March, 1862.

"Thus," he concluded, "it is that even in Lancashire and other manufacturing districts no open demonstration has been made against the blockade[676]." Manufactures other than cotton were greatly prospering, in particular those of woollen, flax, and iron.

And the theory that the cotton lords were not, in reality, hit by the blockade--perhaps profited by it--was bruited even during the war.

_Blackwood's Magazine_, October, 1864, held this view, while the _Morning Post_ of May 16, 1864, went to the extent of describing the "glut" of goods in 1861, relieved just in the nick of time by the War, preventing a financial crash, "which must sooner or later have caused great suffering in Lancashire." Arnold's generalization has been taken to prove that the _immediate_ effect of the Civil War was to save the cotton industry from great disaster and that there _immediately_ resulted large profits to the manufacturers from the increased price of stocks on hand.