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
THE MODERN "BED OF PROCRUSTES"
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, and is severely rebuked for his dictatorial and aggressive speeches at the Trade Union Congress and his action in connexion with industrial trouble on the Clyde, the ghost of Robert Burns being invoked to chastise his namesake in an adaptation of "The Dumfries Volunteer." At the Congress John Burns had said that he was "in the unfortunate position of having probably to go to Parliament at the next election, but he would rather go to prison half a dozen times than to Parliament once.... He must know on what terms he must do the dirty work of going to Parliament." This was not a happy utterance, though it hardly merited Punch's bludgeoning. Burns was "perhaps Boanerges spelt little": he "laid about him like mules who can kick hard"; "the mustard had gone to his nose," etc. But in view of the way in which Mr. Burns sank without a ripple from public notice in August, 1914, there is point in the caution:—