Who is the "'Onest Worker" then? Yours truly,
'Arriet 'Iggings.
Another "hard case" exposed by Punch in the following year was that of the rural schoolmistress, contrasted unfavourably with Crabbe's version. Punch took his cue from a paper read by Dr. Macnamara at a meeting of the N.U.T. and drew a lamentable picture of the weary, overworked and miserably underpaid teacher, "passing poor on £40 a year." The picture was obviously drawn at second-hand, but the line in which the schoolmistress is described as "a lonely, tired, certificated slave" was an excellent summary of a real hardship. Women workers were not only slave-driven by employers and underpaid by the State; they were also handicapped by the competition of their sisters who only worked for pocket-money. This, at least, was the burden of a complaint made by an old-fashioned woman in the Daily Chronicle in the autumn of 1895:—
"In every branch of work we see well-to-do women crowding into the ranks of competition, in consequence of which wages are lowered, and women who really want work are left to starve."
This letter inspired Punch to deliver a fierce homily in verse on the wickedness of well-to-do women "playing at work," to the detriment of their poor sisters. As a set-off, however, we may note that in 1897 Punch condemns mistresses for exploiting "Lady servants," getting them to do double the work for half the ordinary wages because of their inability to stand up for themselves. Sweated women workers were still to be found in the tailoring trade, and Punch did well in 1896 to retell in his columns the story of the tailoress, Mary Ould of Peckham, as unfolded before the Lambeth County Court. She had to buy her own materials and pay her fare for fetching and carrying work; she toiled till 10 p.m. from Saturday till Thursday and, at ¾d. per coat, earned 3s. The pillorying of these abuses did credit to Punch's humanity, but as they were nearly always chosen from unorganized trades, they became increasingly difficult to reconcile with his increasing hostility to trade union organization, and his distrust of legislation expressly designed to satisfy the demands of Labour. Philanthropic efforts to relieve the squalor of the home life of the poor were another matter. To the appeals of the Children's Country Holiday Fund Punch always lent a ready ear, and when Canon Barnett arranged an exhibition of Watts's pictures in Whitechapel, Punch vigorously applauded the scheme. Pictures were as good as sermons, and better than many:—
Where Whitechapel's darkness the weary eyes of the dreary worker dims,
It may be found that Watts's pictures do better than Watts's hymns.
ART IN WHITECHAPEL
"Well, that's what I calls a himpossible persition to get yerself into!"