It is "Excelsior!" upside down.
When Lord Lyttelton, at a harvest festival at Hagley, compared the conduct of the agricultural labourers with the extravagance of the workmen in the Black Country, Punch, disavowing all criticism of the Black Country as dangerous, made bold to ask how it was possible for a Northern pitman to save his means:—
He has only a house found him, rent-free, all the coals he requires, medical attendance and medicine when he or any member of his family is ill, and, at the lowest, seven shillings a day. For this miserable wage, and for these trumpery advantages, the artisan of the pit is expected to do, actually, six hours' work daily. How, thus crushed and starved, can he save anything? If a malignant aristocrat suggests that many an educated gentleman manages on far less, working, moreover, twice as hard, bringing up a family in the right way, and even paying for life assurance, Mr. Punch scorns to argue with a bloated Dives, who would compare a white-handed swell with Nature's nobleman, the hardy son of toil, and the real strength and glory of the nation. Heave a coal at the head of the insolent cynic.
In 1873 the wages in some collieries had gone up to 10s. or 15s. a day:—
Victims of the Income Tax
To be content with from 10s. to 15s. a day is to be satisfied with, say, some £234 a year. If that is to be earned by mining here, there can be no inducement for any skilled miner to betake himself to gold or diamond diggings. He can live in clover, on enough to satisfy all his wants, by raising black diamonds at home. For a miner, an income of the above amount is a salary much more adequate than £5,000 for a Law Officer of the Crown. The miner has no appearances to keep up in a mine. He need not incur any expenses but those which are necessary for his personal wants and pleasures, including champagne and dog-fighting; which, the former luxury as well as the latter amusement, he can manage to afford well enough by a judicious economy above-ground, of lodgings, furniture, and clothes.
Coals went up to 50s. a ton in London this year and the cry of the middle classes, of whom Punch was now the great champion, was echoed with great fervour in an article on a speech by Sir William, then Mr. Vernon Harcourt:—
Mr. Vernon Harcourt, in some of his late speeches, has placed himself in striking contrast with most of the other leading politicians, both Liberal and Conservative, by speaking the truth. For example, at the Druids' Dinner the other day, in discussing the impost by which the incomes of a part of the people are taxed to pay the expenses of the whole, instead of attempting to defend confiscation with sophistry, and to stifle complaint with sneers, he condemned the false and dishonest apology, alleged by financial swindlers' advocates on behalf of the Income-tax, that it weighs only on the rich who are well able to pay it, and he maintained that, on the contrary, it falls "with the greatest severity on the poorest of all the classes of the community—that which, upon limited means and small profits, has to keep up a state of respectability." The lie which Mr. Vernon Harcourt refuted is one of those lies which Statesmen are very apt to tell in talking to simpletons; lies coupled with truths, from which the generality of people at public meetings have not sense enough to disentangle them. It is quite true that the rich are well able to pay the Income-tax; but to say that the Income-tax weighs only on them is telling a falsehood which transcends common lying. The rich, as a rule, can afford to live up to their incomes, and it matters nothing to wealthy people whether their incomes are taxed, or duties are imposed upon the luxuries on which they expend them. The class rightly described by Mr. Harcourt as the poorest of the country consists of persons under the necessity of living as much within their incomes as possible. They need to make all the provision that ever they can against ruin constantly staring them in the face. The Income-tax, substituted for indirect taxation, wrings from them the savings they ought to put by, and, by way of compensation, offers them the advantage of buying cheapened superfluities, which, how cheap soever, are too dear for them at any price. Thus are their slender incomes in large measure confiscated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and amends are made them with facilities to squander the rest.
