Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
When an unprecedented and unanticipated downturn strikes a community, resources from disparate sources combine to aid those harmed by the distress. Today as in the past, public and private sources coordinate relief efforts, and the persistence of distress beyond that which had been anticipated and provided for by insurance brings in resources from outside the community. However, it is possible to crowd out a resource when the efforts of one source decrease the efforts of another. Modern research documents public welfare crowding out private charity (see, for example, Abrams and Schmitz 1978), and this also occurred in the past. Exploring this kind of concern, the present article highlights aspects of income assistance that played a role during the Lancashire cotton famine (1861-65).