MEN AND MASTERS: WORK AND WAGES

In the preceding volume I endeavoured to trace and account for the waning of Punch's reforming zeal and democratic ardour, and to illustrate his gradual movement from Left to Right Centre in the 'fifties, 'sixties, and early 'seventies. Many abuses had been remedied, the barriers of class privilege had been broken down, the cleavage between the "Two Nations" was less glaring, national prosperity had increased, the ladder of learning had been set up by Forster's Education Act. Free Trade and Gladstonian finance had eased the burden of the working man and the taxpayer. England was not a Utopia, but she had travelled far from the days of the Hungry 'Forties. In December, 1883, the late Sir Robert Giffen, one of the most trustworthy and deservedly respected of the much abused tribe of statisticians, published a comparative table of the consumption of the agricultural labourer in 1840 and 1881. Punch's comment takes the form of an imaginary letter from a farm hand under the heading of "Food and Figures": —

"Sir, Maister Punch,

"Look 'ee here, Sir. Squire Giffen, a-spoutin' tother night about I and we country folk, stuck to it that we wur better fed nowadays than we wur forty-one year ago; and them as 'eard 'im say that there, they up and swore as how we wur a grumblin', cantankerous, discontented, set o' chaps as didn't knaw naught of our own jolly good luck. Now look 'ee 'ere, Maister Punch; 'ere be Squire Giffen's figures. Says he that forty-one year ago, that be in 1840, I eat this 'ere in the first column, say in about a couple o' weeks, and that now I gets through this 'ere, wot he's set down in the second, in the same matter o' time."

Food and Figures

The table follows, and then Hodge continues: —

"Now addin' all that there up, that be for 1840, about 69 lbs. of food for I; while now he says, says he, 'Hodge, you old pig, you swallows 373 lbs. – that be six times as much – just as easy in the same time, and you grumbles at it too!' Now look 'ee 'ere, Maister Punch, if I does that there – and figures is figures – well ain't it plain that a feed up like that must give I such a fit o' blues from indigestion, as sets I hankerin' about franchise and land stealin', and such like things o' which I knows and cares just naught, and gets I called by a set o' chaps, as wants nothin' more than to make summat out o' me, yours all of a puzzle,

"Discontented Hodge."

Intelligent Working Man: "Arbitration! Ca' that arbitration! Why, they've given it against us!"

"Appetite comes with eating"; and here we have a concrete and "luciferous" example of the somewhat grudging approval which made Punch acknowledge improved conditions, while at the same time he expressed his misgivings at the leverage which the improvement furnished to agitation and unrest. In the 'forties Punch had recognized that the legitimate grievances of the underfed masses were a real danger. He now recognized, or at any rate implied, that when well-fed they might become equally dangerous under the guidance of extremists. He still believed that there was a great fund of inert anti-revolutionary sentiment amongst the rank and file of the people, but long before the days of "direct action," was alive to the possibilities inherent in the oligarchical rule of Trade Unionism. He saw that a well-organized minority in a key industry might dislocate the whole fabric of production, and when in 1877 the miners attempted to restrict output in order to keep up the price of coal and the rate of wages, addressed the following remonstrance to Mr. Macdonald, the mining M.P.: —

THE ARGUMENT A MINORI

 
So you suggest that they our coals who quarry
Should shorten shifts to raise black diamonds' price?
But, if so, why should other workers tarry,
Each in his craft, to follow your advice?
Till soon, hauled o'er the coals, like spark in stubble,
Over-production's doctrine goes ahead,
And all trades work half time, and come down double
For beef and beer, for house, and clothes, and bread!
 

Towards the close of the 'seventies industrial distress was so general that in January, 1879, Punch abandoned his critical attitude and appealed for united effort and a cessation of party strife to drive the wolf from the door. The "New Charity" that he recommended was a voluntary curtailment of the luxuries of the rich – balls, entertainments, dinners, and theatre parties, the purchase of jewels, wines, etc. – in order to help in relieving distress. This involved a surrender of his old argument in favour of the production of luxuries on the ground that they provided lucrative employment. At the same time, the terrorism applied to non-Unionists by the "Rebecca" gangs in Durham moved him to vigorous protest, and in the verses on "blacklegs" in April he writes: —

 
Blackleg versus Blackguard be it!
Let's see which shall have their way!
 

Spirit of Anarchy: "What! No work! Come and enlist with me – I'll find work for you!!"

Henry George and Socialism

Henry George's Progress and Poverty, which attained a wide circulation in 1883, comes in for a good deal of hostile criticism. It was an epoch-making book; and though, as water to wine when compared to the strong drink of modern anti-capitalistic literature, it was thought worthy of serious attention by Punch. In his cartoon in January, 1884, Red Riding Hood is confronted by the Wolf of Socialism, with Henry George's book peeping out of his pocket. Punch, who reminds us that Mr. Labouchere called the author "George the Fifth," admits that gross inequalities existed, but saw no remedy in Henry George's policy, which he regarded as wholesale robbery, and in "St. George and the Dragon" ranked the American author along with Proudhon, the author of the saying "Property is Theft." Yet a few weeks later he rebukes the Duke of Albany, who, in a speech at Liverpool, had recommended that the poor should be taught cookery. Punch was a great believer in cookery, but held that your hare must be caught first: —

 
Prince, you spoke a word in season
'Gainst uncleanly plates and slops,
But the workman cries with reason
"Teach me first to catch my chops."
 

In 1886 the number of the unemployed rose to a formidable figure. There was rioting in Pall Mall and Piccadilly on February 8th after a meeting in Trafalgar Square, and Punch, under the heading, "Sneaking Sedition," indulged in a violent tirade against the "firebrand fanatics," Messrs. Hyndman, John Burns, and Champion. It is headed by a picture in which Punch is gleefully stringing up three puppets whose faces are portraits of the three "blatant trumpeters of sedition who prated a mixed mob to passion heat, and then discreetly withdrew whilst that passion found vent in wrecking and ruffianism." The writer denies with an exuberance of fiery rhetoric that they represented the unemployed, or anything but "fanatic hatred and shallow conceit – that is to say, themselves." They were "cowardly Catilines of the gutter," recruiting sergeants of the "Army of Anarchy," "Sedition-spouters," who egged on "the drunken, violent unworking-Man" to outrage. Punch appealed to all honest working men to repudiate these so-called but misrepresentative leaders, and "sweep these social democrats for ever from the land." It is a tremendous tirade, but disfigured by a great deal of sheer abuse, and the cause of law and order was not assisted thereby. Sedition cannot be quelled by strong language, and Punch admitted that honest wage-earners were exploited by Capitalists, Monopolists, and Middlemen; that all must compassionate the workless working man, and that all should help him by friendly aid at the moment and hereafter by well-considered reform. In the same number a strong appeal is made to the opulent to help the Mansion House Fund for Unemployed, and not to be scared by frothy street sedition. There had been wild talk at the Trafalgar Square meeting about gallows and lamp-posts for Ministers and Members of Parliament, and Punch, who on occasion was a true prophet, may be pardoned for his failure to foresee a time when John Burns would be denounced as a crusted bureaucrat and Mr. Hyndman publish an enthusiastic eulogy of the Clemenceau whose motto was "Je fais la guerre."

One of the Real "Unemployed": "How am I to make my voice heard in this blackguard row!"

Unemployed and Unemployables

Mr. P.: "Don't lose your head, my man! Who'd suffer most if you killed it?"

The contrast between the unemployed and the unemployables is repeatedly emphasized in these years. Works were closed down because the hands took themselves off to join a procession of unemployed. Wasters refused work, preferring hymn-singing in the streets and levying doles from credulous householders. A cartoon in 1887 shows one of the "real unemployed" exclaiming: "How am I to make my voice heard in this blackguard row?" Socialism is seen "Sowing Tares" – after Millais's picture. Anarchy as the tempter prompts unemployment to plunder, looting, and riot – the wrong way. But Punch was not content with chastising sedition-mongers, and in another cartoon rebuked callous complacency as a real danger in a time of serious distress. The contrasts of splendour and discontent were curiously illustrated in these years. In the spring of 1886 there was a "scene" at the Opera when the scene shifters struck work in the middle of the performance, and appeared on the stage begging for money. In 1887, the year of the Queen's Jubilee, special constables were sworn in, and Mr. Gladstone as the "Grand Old Janus" is shown with one face applauding a constable "downing" an English rough, while the other frowns on an R.I.C. man standing over a rebellious Irishman. It was in the same year that the growth and popularity of street processions moved Punch to protest against the invasion of the Parks by public meetings, which drove away quiet people who used them for recreation from fear of King Mob and the rabble rout. The procession habit has long since come to stay, though it is only of recent years that the presence of children has become a feature in these demonstrations. As for the Hyde Park stump orators, the types genially satirized in one of the Voces Populi series in 1889 include the Elderly Faddist, the Irish Patriot, the Reciter, and the Physical Force Socialist. The Reciter, who dates back to the time when the Latin satirist spoke of him as a nuisance in the dog-days, has disappeared from the Parks, though he flourishes in Georgian coteries. The other types remain with us, together with some new varieties. But there is little new under the sun. In 1887 the Annual Register mentions the exploit of a political agitator who chained himself to the railings in a conspicuous position in Central London, thus depriving the militant "suffragettes" of the credit of introducing this method of protest.

Praise for Cardinal Manning

Procrustes: "Now, then, you fellows; I mean to fit you all to my little Bed!"

Chorus: "Oh, Lor-r!"

["It is impossible to establish universal uniformity of hours without inflicting very serious injury to workers." (Motion at the recent Trades Congress.)

In the great dock strike of 1889 Punch, on the whole, showed a disposition to side with the men. In his first cartoon in September the working man appeals to the employer to think less of his luxuries, more of Labour's needs. A week later Punch appeals to the working man not to kill the guinea-fowl (Trade), that lays the golden eggs, by striking. In October, employer and employee are shown at the game of Beggar-my-Neighbour, the master playing Lock-out against Strike. Punch pleads for give-and-take. Both will lose by the game they are playing. The same argument is further developed a few months later in another cartoon in which the foreign competitor is the tertius gaudens. The foreign Fox goes off with Trade, while the two dogs, Capital and Labour, are asleep. To return to the dock strike, we may note that Cardinal Manning's intervention was warmly applauded. Punch thought the Cardinal ought to have been made a Privy Councillor and Lord Mayor Whitehead a baronet for their services as conciliators. Praise for a Cardinal and a Lord Mayor is indeed a wonderful change from the Punch of forty years earlier. The settlement of that "deed of darkness," the gas strike in 1889, prompted the cartoon showing the indignation of Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger over the frustration of their plans. Industrial troubles were rife in 1890. The Labour May Day, already instituted, inspires a set of verses after Tennyson, in which an enthusiastic operative sings,

 
"Toil's to be Queen of the May, brother, Labour is Queen o' this May!"
 

The introduction of an eight hours' day, already vigorously agitated for, set Punch thinking on what would happen if the principle were logically applied all round – to the Courts, restaurants, theatres and the medical profession. He returned to the subject in the following year, and came to much the same conclusion – that it would turn out a new bed of Procrustes, on the ground that the universal uniformity of hours of work could not be established without inflicting serious injury on the workers. Socialism still continued to preoccupy Punch in 1890. This time it is depicted as a snake attacking an eagle in mid-air, rather a strange inversion of natural history. The eagle is Trade, the wings are Labour and Capital. The prosaic critic will ask how the snake got there except on the wings of a soaring imagination. John Burns is still a favourite bête noire