Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 4 of 4.—1892-1914

 
"Only another dole," said he;
"It is a famous Ministry."
 

The Trade Union Congress at Plymouth in the same year censured Lord Mount Edgcumbe because, in throwing open his grounds to them, he had reserved the privacy of his lawn for a garden party. Punch accordingly indulged in some sarcastic verses, supposed to be written by a Trade Unionist, and ironically applauding the action of Mr. Ben Tillett, who had distinguished himself by his attack on Lord Mount Edgcumbe. This was fair game enough, though to-day it would probably have been passed over in silence. Punch no doubt was thinking of the saying that an Englishman's house is his castle; and hardly anticipated the time when an Englishman's or an English nobleman's castle would cease to be his home. To-day we read with an amused surprise Punch's comment in 1900 on the introduction of an eight-hours' day for domestics in Australia, and his forecast of a similar state of affairs in England under a new Patriarchal Statute. Nor is there anything wildly extravagant in his ironical anticipation of the cook of the future demanding £100 wages, though unable to guarantee more in return than "chop one day and steak the next." The higher education of servants, according to Punch, was tending to produce a type which knew everything except the things which really mattered. He tells us in 1902 of a lady who was delighted to get a cook who could develop her photographs, and gives us, in the same year, an excellent study (after Gilbert) of the "Up-to-date Cook-General": —

 
I am the very pattern of an up-to-date cook-general,
I've information vegetable, animal and mineral;
I've passed the seventh standard, and I vary the monotony
Of flirting with the butcher's boy by writing books on botany.
I know the chemistry of zinc, tin, potash and ammonium;
I practise on the fiddle, flute, piano and harmonium;
I understand minutely the formation of an icicle,
And in the season round the Park I like to ride my bicycle.
I've studied Herbert Spencer and I've views on sociology,
And as a mere parergon I have taken up conchology —
In short, in matters vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very model of an up-to-date cook-general.
 
 
In fact, when I have learnt to tell a turnip from an artichoke,
Or grill a steak that will not make my mistress's dinner-party choke;
When I can cook a mutton chop or any plain comestible
In such a way that it becomes not wholly indigestible;
When I can wash a cup without inevitably breaking it,
Or make a bed where folk can sleep at ease without remaking it;
In short, when I've an inkling of economy domestical,
You'll say, "Of all cook-generals this girl the very best I call."
For my culinary ignorance and all-round imbecility
Is only to be equalled by my housewifely futility —
But still, in learning vegetable, animal and mineral,
I am the very pattern of an up-to-date cook-general.
 

The Aristocrats of Labour

The plethora of processions in 1901 moved Punch to make various suggestions for the better conduct of such spectacles, mostly in the shape of fantastic and satirical concessions to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of sightseers. Warnings against the panem et circenses habit were legitimate enough, but Punch took a more aggressive line in his attack on the miners in 1901: —

A BLACK LOOK-OUT

(A paper picked up near the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.)

Pity the sorrows of a poor collier, who, if a shilling export duty is imposed upon coal, will have (possibly) to see —

1. His wife giving up her music and riding lessons.

2. His children not able to go to the seaside for a month or two.

3. His favourite licensed victualler unable to supply him with that extra quart he enjoys so much after he has drunk the others.

4. His dogs unable to compete for prizes because their upkeep will be too expensive.

5. His tailor sending in his account and respectfully requesting immediate payment.

6. His wine merchant writing to ask him why he has given up ordering champagne.

7. Worst (and, fortunately, most improbable) of all, himself having to work four days a week instead of three.

In earlier years Punch would have given chapter and verse for such charges; the later method, though it makes easier reading, carries less weight. Punch did not, however, wholly abandon the practice of "documenting" his criticism, and he turned it to excellent account in a discussion of the much-abused German clerk in 1898, when he quoted the following passage from the official Consular Report from Stettin, issued by the Foreign Office: —

Much of the commercial knowledge of Germany has been supplied by young Germans who have been employed as clerks in Great Britain, mostly as foreign correspondents. British clerks cannot be used as foreign correspondents, because not one in a thousand can correspond correctly in any foreign language.

For the effective German competition which threatened to oust British trade from the markets of the world, Punch did not hold any one class responsible. The fault was our national complacency, symbolized in 1901 by a lethargic John Bull priding himself on the superior excellence of his goods, but declining to take the trouble to make foreign customers understand it. The contrast between the German and the Briton in regard to practical business capacity is brought out in the papers headed, "Pashley's Opinions." "Efficiency" was the motto of the hour, yet Punch found it hard to reconcile the cry with the "Catchwords for the Million," especially the "Equal Rights of Man" as interpreted by trade union rules, especially those affecting bricklaying, which in his view sterilized competition and ambition. Another side of the subject is dealt with in the series of papers entitled, "How to get on," one of which satirizes the almost hysterical worship of "efficiency" by those who in the same breath declared that we were the greatest race on earth and also the greatest slackers, but confined their own energies to mere talk. The underlying principles, however, which govern Punch's contributions to the "Efficiency" controversy could not be better summed up than in the dictum of Mr. J. M. Beck,⁵ the Solicitor-General of the United States: "The great evil of the world to-day is the aversion to work."

"Wot d'y' fink o' this 'ere G.B.S.?"

"Never tried it! I smokes V.B.D."

Sport and Crime

What troubled Punch, to borrow an epigram from another American anonymous writer, was "not so much the unemployment of the idle as the idleness of the employed." He is increasingly concerned with the popular pre-occupation with sport and criminal celebrities, combined with a corresponding apathy on important questions. Foreign politics were only brought home to the masses when they lent themselves to sensational or spectacular treatment, and, in 1903, Punch gibbets an announcement in the Scotsman: "Scenes resulting from the Macedonian Atrocities displayed by the Modern Marvel Cinematograph, at 3 and 8 (see Amusement Column)." The sentimental interest in criminals is bluntly rebuked as a perversion of the philanthropic maxim that "to know all is to forgive all"; the blame for this was attributed to the journals which catered for the million, but the avidity with which this pabulum was devoured, and the absence of any protest from those affected, was a disquieting symptom; and Punch was within his rights in making game of the Clarion when it scented class distinction in the abortive movement to introduce knee-breeches for evening wear.

Liberals and Labour

In the Unionist defeat at the election of 1906, Punch recognized not merely the return to power of the Liberals, but the coming of the "New Demos," the growing importance of the Labour Party, and the increasing impetus lent to its demands. His "farewell to the beaten side" is animated by no enthusiasm for the victors: —

 
You leave a record which shall bear the light
When History delves for Truth in after days,
Not as the sudden mob condemns at sight,
Or stints its grudging praise.
 
 
Meanwhile the heart of gratitude is cold;
A young new Demos, born of yester-eve,
Big-mouthed and blustering, overbears the old,
Waiting for no man's leave.
 
 
Every inhuman name that he can spell
He prints in red for all to know you by,
Citing his gods to prove he would not tell,
Nor yet believe, a lie.
 
 
He paints your lurid portraits on the polls: —
"Drivers of slaves that oust the white man's brood."
"Bigots that bind in chains our children's souls!"
"Filchers of poor folk's food!"
 
 
Had you been Czars to drain the people's blood,
Or sought to earn a country's dying curse,
Dragging her remnant honour through the mud,
He could have done no worse.
 
 
His hooligans are out with stones and dirt;
And in the darkness you must hide your head,
Nor look for Chivalry to salve the hurt,
For Demos reigns instead.
 
 
Not much it helps to know that those, ere long,
Who lent him aid and did a mutual deal,
Will find their henchman, grown a shade too strong,
Stamping them under heel.
 
 
Little it serves that they, your old-time foes,
Who found him useful for their present ends,
Must seek you soon and plaintively propose —
"Please save us from our friends!"
 
 
But let this solace keep your hearts resigned —
That, till a second lustre's course is through,
The noblest heritage you leave behind
Demos can scarce undo.
 

The prophecy that the Liberals would invoke the assistance of the Unionists to "save them from their friends" was not fulfilled; the course of legislation up to the war indicated in the main a desire to consult the demands of Labour rather than to break away from the alliance. The summary of reasons "Why I lost" from defeated candidates furnishes a useful commentary on the verses quoted above. They include Chinese Labour, the Big Loaf cry, the Education Bill of 1902, the Trade Disputes Bill, Overbridge Trams, the Japanese Alliance and the Entente Cordiale. The messages were not actually received by Punch, but they are not an unfair interpretation of the issues which weighed with the bulk of the electorate. A "spirited foreign policy" was out of favour, and a cold fit had succeeded to the fervour of the "Khaki" election.

The Government lost no time in setting to work to redeem their pledge about Trade Disputes. Early in April, C. – B. figures in the cartoon "Hard to please" as a farmer soliloquizing over his dog (Labour), "He's had two platefuls of biscuits and isn't satisfied. Looks as if he wanted raw meat." The plates, labelled Workmen's Compensation and Merchant Shipping Bill, are both empty. The third, the Trade Disputes Bill, is full of biscuits as yet untouched. When the Attorney-General, Sir J. Lawson Walton, introduced that measure, Punch, in his "Essence of Parliament," speaks of it as a "ticklish Bill" conceding important demands in regard to picketing and conspiracy, but "as to the immunity of Trade Union funds from amercement consequent on civil actions, the Bill does not go the full lengths of the demands of Labour." The attitude of the Labour Party, who threatened to bring in their own Bill and to insist on its substitution for the Government measure, is symbolized in the cartoon showing Labour offering his scales to Justice in preference to her own, in which Capital and Labour are equally balanced, with the comment, "I think you'll find this pair works better – for me." The climbing down of the Government in the autumn session is illustrated in a further cartoon representing Labour as the predominant partner. The Liberal Party is seen on foot being pushed on by a donkey (Labour) drawing a cart in which the Trade Disputes Bill is sitting. "Yes," says the old lady, "I was wrong to threaten him with a whip. The dear creature must be led, not driven. Still – this isn't quite the way I meant to come." Comment in Punch's "Essence of Parliament" on the progress of the Bill is curiously meagre, but there is one illuminating paragraph on the Report Stage: "The Attorney-General explained that when at the earlier stage he argued against the immunity of Trade Unions from action at law, he did not mean to debar himself from subsequently insisting upon the justice of such immunity." The momentous and far-reaching consequences of a measure which created a privileged class and set them above the law were only dimly apprehended in Punch, who confined himself in his further comments to the lack of spirit shown by the Opposition in the Lords. Thus in "The Better Part of Valour" we see the Trade Disputes Bill standing over the prostrate figure of the Education Bill, about to batter its way into the Lords, while Lord Lansdowne remarks: "I bar your way? My dear fellow! Why, you've got a mandate." "Well, so had my friend here," rejoins the T.D.B., on which Lord Lansdowne replies: "Ah! but not such a big one!" The same idea is developed in the Epilogue, where the Lords are charged by the representative of "The People's Will" with having attacked and brutally ill-treated the Education Bill, while they were too cowardly to tackle the Trade Disputes Bill.

The Revolt of the Middle Classes

The Daily Mail, which had anticipated a Unionist victory at the polls, now espoused the cause of the "Middle-Class Serf," taxed and rated and bled beyond endurance "in the interests of the most pampered section of the community the labouring man," and rumours of the formation of a new political body, with a view to obtaining justice and recognition, impelled Punch to indulge in a forecast, half sympathetic, half sceptical, of "The Turning of the Middle-Class Worm": —

 
England, be warned! The time for patience passes;
You are more near the eve
Of a revolt among the Middle Classes
Than you perhaps believe;
Worn to a thread by Labour's licensed plunder
Of what poor desultory pay they earn,
Can anybody reasonably wonder
These worms should turn?
 

In 1897 Punch had resented Government interference with the management of workhouses, and fell foul of the Local Government Board when a Board of Guardians in Lincolnshire were asked to make a return of the number of currants put into the children's puddings. Ten years later the ground of this complaint had shifted; and the administrative scandals which Punch assails in 1907 are ascribed to the extravagance of Labour Guardians. Poplar is described as "the Pauper's Paradise"; and the new Bumbledom is shown, in a perversion of the scene from "Oliver Twist," "asking for more," while the miserable ratepayer ladles out champagne-cup for its refreshment. The "latest excursion" is "A day in Profuse Poplar," the lair of the "Gorgeous Guardians."

The Workmen's Compensation Act is treated as a set-off to the Prevention of Corruption Act, aimed at the abuse of secret commissions, and a butler is shown reassuring a cook and advising her how to get her own back by a carefully contrived accident. The same spirit is revealed in the picture of the workman whose innocence has been outraged by someone who said he had seen him hurry: "I never 'urry."

To this year belongs the farcical suggestion of a Society to Protect Employers, for the special benefit of persons who were afraid of their servants and had not the courage to dismiss them.

Punch was nearer the mark in his illustrations of the popular prejudice against the Army. A football enthusiast at a match commiserates "silly people who mess about with a rifle on Saturday afternoons"; and a "Spartan mother" standing at a barrack gate, uplifts her voice in thankfulness that her Bill "isn't wasting his time drilling," while Bill is shown in an inset engrossed in the contemplation of a pot of beer.

Socialist: "Cert'nly."

H. T.: "And if yer 'ad two cows, yer'd give me one?"

S.: "'Course I would!"

H. T.: "An' if yer 'ad two pigs?"

S.: "Wot yer talkin' about? I've got two pigs!"

"The Open-minded Beggar"

Punch distrusted Socialism because, in his view, it led in practice to vicarious generosity. The Socialist would give half of everything, so long as he didn't possess it himself. Yet in apportioning the blame for the railway trouble in 1907, Punch did not spare Capital. Railway directors and trade unions were in his cartoon shown as equally animated by a disregard for the interests of the public. Incidentally we may note that the volunteer service rendered by the general public in 1919 is anticipated in a humorous sketch of the experiences of an amateur porter. Punch, even where he felt strongly, was alive to the extravagances of the extremists on his own side, witness the verses in 1908 which purport to express the perplexity of "an open-minded beggar": —

 
Reader, tell me, if you know,
What, on earth, is Socialism.
Is it – men have told me so —
Some preposterous abysm,
Into which we all may drop —
With the criminals on top?
 
 
Is the vehement Express
Justified in all it mentions;
And are Wells and G. B. S.
Worse than Sikes in their intentions?
Do those Fabian beasts of prey
Wish to take my wife away?
 
 
Or – observe that I am quite
Open-minded, gentle reader —
Are they sometimes nearly right
In the shocking Labour Leader?
Will the coming Commune be
Paradise for you and me?
 
 
Do you think it can be true
That the death of competition
Guarantees for me and you
Sinless Edens – new edition?
Or was Stuart Mill correct —
Will there be some grave defect?
 
 
Shall we all be servile wrecks
With the brand of Marx imprinted
On our miserable necks,
As The Referee has hinted?
Or – see Justice– shall we share
Perfect freedom with the air?
 
 
Will that entity, the State
Of Collectivist Utopia,
Actually operate
Something like a cornucopia?
Or will Hardie's fatted friends
Leave me only odds and ends?
 
 
In this monster maze of doubt
I am groping like a blind man.
Shall I boldly blossom out
As a follower of Hyndman?
Or continue to exist
As an Individualist?
 
 
So, dear reader, will you, please,
Tell a poor, distracted Briton
Whom, in troubled times like these,
He should put his little bit on?
And, philosopher and guide,
Do pick out the winning side!
 

Punch's comment on the Eight Hours Bill is influenced by the objections of those who opposed it on the ground that it would affect the cost of all the necessaries of life. King Coal observes, "This means that I shall have to reduce my output," and Commerce rejoins, "Then I shall have to reduce mine, too," and both agree in doubting whether the Government had ever thought of this inevitable result.

Old Age Pensions are shown in 1908 as having already become a millstone round the neck of the Government; and in that form Mr. Asquith is seen tying them to the person of Mr. Lloyd George as a presentation to be worn by all Chancellors of the Exchequer in perpetuity. "Several of our contemporaries," Punch observes, "are devoting their columns to an explanation of the best way to obtain an Old Age Pension. Mr. Punch's advice is: Don't save."

Mr. Asquith: "He wouldn't have stood this kind of thing. I wonder whether I ought."

On the much-vexed question of Chinese Labour, Punch sided against its critics, and his cartoons in 1906 represent Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman forcing unwelcome freedom on the Chinese coolie. Ignorance of Imperial questions on the part of the Labour Party is a frequent theme of comment. In the same year we find an article describing an imaginary tour in the Colonies by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Philip Snowden. Mr. Keir Hardie spent two months in India in 1907, and the reports of his speeches, which he declared to be gross exaggerations and fabrications, led to vehement protests in the British Press. His biographer states that "for a full fortnight Keir Hardie was the most violently detested man throughout the English-speaking world. Even Punch joined in the vituperation with a cartoon by Linley Sambourne, which showed Britannia gripping the agitator by the scruff of the neck and apostrophizing him: 'Here, you'd better come home. We know all about you there, and you'll do less harm.'" Punch's adverse comments were not merely pictorial, and though Mr. Keir Hardie laid himself open to criticism by his angularity, his vanity and such remarks as "India to-day is governed by a huge military oligarchy," his courage and sincerity passed unrecognized.

Strikes and trade depression furnish themes for comment in 1908. In one cartoon Trade is shown as a lean and ill-favoured goose that has lost confidence in herself; in another, an engineer going back to work after seven months' stoppage, meets a cotton-spinning girl just coming out, and is credited with the admission that his action has done no good to himself or anyone else.

In 1909-1910 the conflict between Lords and Commons over the Budget proposals overshadowed all other home issues. It even became a subject of debate at preparatory schools, and Punch quotes a bonâ fide letter from a boy of nine: "We had two debates yesterday about the Budget being rejected. I was against the Budget, but the ones who were for it won, because just about half the ones who were against it had to go away for their prayers." Mr. Lloyd George was now the champion and hero of the democracy, for this was the year of the famous Limehouse speech and its sequel at Newcastle, where he referred to the House of Lords as "500 ordinary men, chosen accidentally from the unemployed." Dukes were handled almost as roughly as by Punch in the 'forties, and "robber-barons" were held up to obloquy. Punch resented this wholesale vituperation, and indulged in some effective reprisals in his criticism of trade union indiscipline, notably the growing tendency towards unofficial and lightning strikes. Thus, in 1910, he published a cartoon showing a trade union official lying prostrate in the road, overthrown and left behind by a crowd marching under a banner inscribed "Down with Authority." The comments on the payment of Members in the same year imply that trade unions were hostile to a change which impaired their control. The State might pay M.P.s, but the trade unions must call the tune. Nor was Punch favourably impressed by the Government's scheme of Insurance against Unemployment, which, in his forecast, would only encourage the existing reluctance to work.

Claims for "Recognition"

Throughout 1911 and 1912 the claims of the new Trade Unionism met with little sympathy. "Look here, my friend," says John Bull of the "New Volunteer Police" to a Trade Union leader: "I've been hearing a good deal of talk of 'recognition.' Well, I represent the public, and it's about time my interests were 'recognized.'" A month later, in October, 1911, an "imported agitator" is shown talking to his comrade as they watch the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Sydney Buxton) nailing up a notice of the new Government Conciliation Scheme, with Sir George Askwith as chairman of the Industrial Council. "Don't be down-hearted," he observes. "Let's hope we shall be able to make as much trouble as before." This was apportioning the responsibility for failure in advance; but unfortunately failure there was. Punch's frontispiece to 1912 is the "tug of war" of Labour and Capital. The coal crisis was again acute in February, but in its opening stages Punch's hostility was chiefly displayed against the coal merchant, who was against strikes, but the more they were threatened the better it suited his book. Punch derived a certain malicious satisfaction from the spectacle of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's exclusion from the coal conference; but recognized that the final arbiter was not this or that leader or statesman but Famine. The thorny question of "blackleg" labour having again emerged, Punch asserted the right of the community in no uncertain terms. John Bull declares that he can't make the striker work, if he won't; but if others want to, he can and will make the striker let them. This strike introduced a new figure into Punch's portrait gallery; "Prince Petroleo" being introduced for the first time as a possible "second string" and rival of the hitherto indispensable King Coal. But such light-hearted treatment is henceforth rarely found in the treatment of industrial troubles. By the summer John Bull is seen on the edge of the crater of Labour unrest, listening vainly for any reassuring voices from its depths. The methods of the Trade Unionist are contrasted with those of Justice: he is all for striking first and arguing afterwards. The threat of a general strike was heard in June, but Punch remained sceptical as to the response. Agitators might call spirits from the vasty deep; but there would be no answer. In 1913 Dublin, for the first time in its long and chequered career, became the chief focus of industrial unrest in the British Isles, for this was the year of the strike of the Dublin transport workers, and the emergence, in the person of the notorious Jim Larkin, of a super-agitator of the most strenuous type. Strange things were done in the name of Liberty Hall – his headquarters – Mr. Birrell's absenteeism having become chronic, not to say conspicuous. Larkin was arrested and imprisoned, but released with a rapidity which reduced the penalty to a farce; and the assaults on the Dublin police during the strike riots in the winter were sufficiently severe to excuse Mr. Punch for calling their assailants the "be-labouring classes."

Labour Members in Transition

Mr. John Burns's political evolution, since the days when Punch savagely attacked him at the time of the Trafalgar Square riots in 1884, had long removed him from the range of attack on the score of his revolutionary views. His former associates regarded him as a renegade; independent observers found in him an energetic and arbitrary bureaucrat. Punch appreciated his manliness, but could not resist having an occasional dig at his complacent egotism, and when the Cabinet was reconstructed early in 1914, there is a picture of him praising the four new appointments as "excellent choices – with perhaps the exception of Samuel, Hobhouse and Masterman" – in other words, all but his own.

Towards Labour members of the House of Commons, Punch, as we have seen, had of recent years been none too friendly: least of all to Mr. Keir Hardie. But on the occasion of the debate in the House over the resignations at the Curragh in March, 1914, Punch's Parliamentary representative credits them with intervening effectually as representatives of the vast social and political weight behind them. In particular he praises Mr. John Ward and Mr. J. H. Thomas for their warning against militarism. "General Gough may feel keenly the Ulster situation. Tommy Atkins will feel not less keenly the industrial situation." For Mr. Thomas went on to point out that in the following November four hundred thousand railwaymen would come to grips with their employers, and if they did not attain satisfactory terms they might simultaneously strike. And if the Opposition doctrine in regard to Ulster were sound, added Mr. Thomas, "it will be my duty to tell the railwaymen to prepare for the worst by organizing their forces, the half-million capital possessed by the Union to be used to provide arms and ammunition for them." Mr. Thomas still occasionally utters blood-curdling warnings, but is now the special bête noire, to put it mildly, of the Labour extremists. General Gough's views on Ulster and Ireland have undergone considerable modifications, and Mr. John Ward, who denounced military juntas, is Colonel John Ward, D.S.O., the gallant soldier, fearlessly candid friend of Labour and uncompromising foe of Bolshevism.

The Rector: "Now, Molly, would you rather be beautiful or good?"

Molly: "I'd rather be beautiful and repent."

Uncle George: "What! Hate all your lessons? Come, now, you don't mean to say you hate history?"

Niece: "Yes, I do. To tell you the truth, Uncle, I don't care a bit what anybody ever did."

Miss Smith: "Now, Madge, tell me, which would you rather be – pretty or good?"

Madge (promptly): "I would rather be pretty, Miss Smith; I can easily be good whenever I like to try."