S.: "'Course I would!"
H. T.: "An' if yer 'ad two pigs?"
S.: "Wot yer talkin' about? I've got two pigs!"
"The Open-minded Beggar"Punch Punch Punch
Punch's comment on the Eight Hours Bill is influenced by the objections of those who opposed it on the ground that it would affect the cost of all the necessaries of life. King Coal observes, "This means that I shall have to reduce my output," and Commerce rejoins, "Then I shall have to reduce mine, too," and both agree in doubting whether the Government had ever thought of this inevitable result.
Old Age Pensions are shown in 1908 as having already become a millstone round the neck of the Government; and in that form Mr. Asquith is seen tying them to the person of Mr. Lloyd George as a presentation to be worn by all Chancellors of the Exchequer in perpetuity. "Several of our contemporaries," Punch observes, "are devoting their columns to an explanation of the best way to obtain an Old Age Pension. Mr. Punch's advice is: Don't save ."
Mr. Asquith: "He wouldn't have stood this kind of thing. I wonder whether I ought."
On the much-vexed question of Chinese Labour, Punch sided against its critics, and his cartoons in 1906 represent Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman forcing unwelcome freedom on the Chinese coolie. Ignorance of Imperial questions on the part of the Labour Party is a frequent theme of comment. In the same year we find an article describing an imaginary tour in the Colonies by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Philip Snowden. Mr. Keir Hardie spent two months in India in 1907, and the reports of his speeches, which he declared to be gross exaggerations and fabrications, led to vehement protests in the British Press. His biographer states that "for a full fortnight Keir Hardie was the most violently detested man throughout the English-speaking world. Even Punch joined in the vituperation with a cartoon by Linley Sambourne, which showed Britannia gripping the agitator by the scruff of the neck and apostrophizing him: 'Here, you'd better come home. We know all about you there, and you'll do less harm.'" Punch's adverse comments were not merely pictorial, and though Mr. Keir Hardie laid himself open to criticism by his angularity, his vanity and such remarks as "India to-day is governed by a huge military oligarchy," his courage and sincerity passed unrecognized.
Strikes and trade depression furnish themes for comment in 1908. In one cartoon Trade is shown as a lean and ill-favoured goose that has lost confidence in herself; in another, an engineer going back to work after seven months' stoppage, meets a cotton-spinning girl just coming out, and is credited with the admission that his action has done no good to himself or anyone else.
In 1909-1910 the conflict between Lords and Commons over the Budget proposals overshadowed all other home issues. It even became a subject of debate at preparatory schools, and Punch quotes a bonâ fide letter from a boy of nine: "We had two debates yesterday about the Budget being rejected. I was against the Budget, but the ones who were for it won, because just about half the ones who were against it had to go away for their prayers." Mr. Lloyd George was now the champion and hero of the democracy, for this was the year of the famous Limehouse speech and its sequel at Newcastle, where he referred to the House of Lords as "500 ordinary men, chosen accidentally from the unemployed." Dukes were handled almost as roughly as by Punch in the 'forties, and "robber-barons" were held up to obloquy. Punch resented this wholesale vituperation, and indulged in some effective reprisals in his criticism of trade union indiscipline, notably the growing tendency towards unofficial and lightning strikes. Thus, in 1910, he published a cartoon showing a trade union official lying prostrate in the road, overthrown and left behind by a crowd marching under a banner inscribed "Down with Authority." The comments on the payment of Members in the same year imply that trade unions were hostile to a change which impaired their control. The State might pay M.P.s, but the trade unions must call the tune. Nor was Punch favourably impressed by the Government's scheme of Insurance against Unemployment, which, in his forecast, would only encourage the existing reluctance to work.