Work, Wages, Pensions, and Doles
Farmers and farm labourers were regarded in Punch's survey as not much more than pawns in the game of party politics. The claims of organized labour in the other great industries and the general tendency of legislation in their interests found him a more vigilant and a more hostile critic. Even so mild a measure as the Early Closing Bill of 1896—with the principle of which he had been in agreement in earlier years—excited his misgivings and prompted a forecast of increasingly intimate interference with the private life of householders: the outline of his "Household Regulations Act" contains provisions for hours of rising, cleaning, meals, bills and rent. It is a burlesque, but none the less indicates resentment of patriarchal State interference. Yet Punch's general individualism admitted of exceptions. He noted the failure of the Voluntary Labour Bureau system, and was frivolously critical of the amateur attempt of a vicar to start Trust Houses to supersede Public Houses—a movement which later on came to stay and to achieve solid results. Here, however, allowance must be made for Punch's inveterate distrust of temperance agitators. State interference on behalf of minorities did not always meet with Punch's approval, and in 1898 we find him vehemently protesting against the recognition of "Conscientious Objectors" to vaccination. In a striking picture headed "The Triumph of De-Jenner-ation" he shows a grisly skeleton waving as his banner the Vaccination Bill, which Punch calls "the Bill for the encouragement of Small Pox." But the burden of his criticisms of Labour is concerned with the artificial restriction of output, the conversion of the trade unions from an industrial to a political organization, and the increasing tendency of State intervention to encourage a reluctance either to work or save. The picture of Hyde Park on "Labour Day" in 1898 with the grass strewn with recumbent sleeping figures is, if I read it aright, designed less in compassion for the unemployed than as a satire on the unemployable. Wages were high in the bricklaying trade, but a shortage of labour was complained of; as for the skill required, a surveyor had written to the Daily Telegraph stating that "any ordinary man could learn bricklaying in a fortnight," and Punch ironically foreshadows the invasion of the trade by underpaid clerks, barristers, etc. Ruskin College—opened at Oxford in 1899—is described as "a College for Labour Leaders" by Punch, who rather unnecessarily prophesied that it might become the scene of "strikes"; but the friction which arose between those who conceived that the function of the college was purely educational, and those who wished to make it a school of political thought, went far to justify Punch's misgivings. The plan of Old Age Pensions had long been in the air. The committee which reported in 1892 showed considerable divergence of opinion. Mr. Chamberlain, the chairman, condemned Mr. Charles Booth's proposal of the general endowment of old age as a gigantic system of outdoor relief for every one, good and bad, thrifty and unthrifty. The majority of the Royal Commission of 1893 were adverse to State pensions. The Rothschild Committee in 1896 found themselves unable to devise any satisfactory proposal. The Select Committee over which Mr. Chaplin presided put forward a scheme substantially on Mr. Charles Booth's lines, but in view of the cost and the hostility of the Government the matter rested till the passing of the Act by the Liberals in 1908. Punch, it may be noted, was no enthusiast for the scheme formulated by the Chaplin Committee; his cartoon of "Old Gaffer" and "Little Chappelin" (modelled on Southey's ballad) is undoubtedly hostile, and the accompanying verses end up on a cynical note when the "Old Gaffer" asks "Little Chappelin" what is the bag he is carrying, and is told:
"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;