Underpaid Women Workers
On behalf of unorganized labour, when it was unfairly exploited by the employer, Punch continued to lift up his voice in the old strain. In 1893 the hard case of the shopgirls, slave-driven by exacting masters, always standing, too tired at the end of the week to profit by Sunday, prompts him to a plea for a true Day of Rest. The verses, like the "Cry of the City Clerk," are vitiated by their sentimentality. There is more vigour in the lines "'Arriet on Labour" in the same year, which show that the new type of woman was not confined to the upper classes. 'Arriet is a workgirl who works hard, loves her freedom and nights off, has no respect for spouting Labour candidates, and no envy of married drudges:—
Labour? Well, yus, the best of hus must work; yer carn't git quit of it;
And you and me, Poll, like the rest, must do our little bit of it.
But oh, I loves my freedom, Poll, my hevenings hoff is 'eaven;
But wives and slavies ain't allowed even one day in seven.
Jigger the men! Sam spouts and shouts about the 'Onest Worker.
That always means a Man, of course—he's a smart Man, the shirker.
But when a Man lives upon his wife, and skulks around his diggings,