DOI issue:
August 9, 1884
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17757#0069
August 9, 1884.]
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
61
THE TOWN.
No. IX.—The Factory.
Who ’ll sing the Chimney ? Not the shuddering hard!
Dew and the soaring lark, the leafy show
Of June-clad woods,
the gloaming
golden-starred,
Church-spire and
mountain-peak—
these freely flow
In limpid verse;
hut the dull en-
gine-yard,
Where swart and
sweating toil
foregathers F No!
The song of
Labour’s life
demands a sweep
De Twitteb’s trim-
built stanzas can-
not keep.
Owner of unearned
thousands, and a
taste,
Bland Melibceus, whose aesthetic eye
A soot-flake shocks, bans the grey city’s waste,
Its sunless yards and shrieking enginery.
The locomotive’s unreposeful haste,
The sordid street, the smoke be-clouded sky,
All from which Ruskin—by fierce words—would free us,
Is evil unredeemed to Melibceus.
Was it the hand of Nature, or of Man
Made metal noisy and made carbon black '
May we hark hack to the Arcadian plan,
The lumbering wain and the deep-rutted track ?
Although he vaunts his tastes Yirgilian,
And finds such music in the mill-wheel’s clack,
Sleek Melibceus lingers in Park Lane,
Dines at his Club, and travels home by train !
Meanwhile the myriad thralls of sooty toil,
Mechanic myrmidons in ant-like throngs,
Sweat to subserve his needs. Foul forges spoil
The human hive as theme for urban songs.
The flaming cauldron and the glowing coal,
The noise, the noisomeness, all that belongs
To Manufacture in the mighty city
Moves Melibceus to contemptuous pity.
Pity ? Let Melibceus come and learn
Broader compassion than the sniffling woe
Of dilettanti; see, how drudges earn
Their starveling pittance. Chilled by winter’s snow,
From dull and distant rookeries out they turn,
Hours ere the London dawn’s first sickly glow
Touches the sky, while drowsing still on down,
Snug lie the moneyed thousands of the Town.
See them throng in \ The bell’s sonorous clang,
Toil’s tocsin, quickens laggard steps. The stout
Look sombre ; some whom fell disease’s fang
Ha* marked may stagger midst the hurrying rout,
But Hunger hides the sharp rheumatic pang ;
The lean-jawed labourer who has long been “ out ”
Crawling from yard to yard in search of work,
For some sharp twinges will not shrink or shirk.
Keen eyes are on him. Bugson’s solemn frown
And sharp rebuke would scathe him did he take
To" long an “ easy.” Pugson, churl and clown,
Has power to make stout Britons cringe and quake.
A man of wide if dubious renown,
Of still vindictiveness which he will slake
In a poor wretch’s ruin, and smile on
The unmoved managerial paragon.
Such his employers deem him. They indeed
Are souls superior, of too high a flight
Au?ht but the gross result of toil to heed,
The individual toiler ’s far too slight
A matter for their thought. Old Mattock's meed
Is his apportioned wage ; this cancels quite
The only claim his steadiest service offers,
Which is not on their conscience but their coffers.
Mattock has served them fifty years or so,
A faithful drudge, his ageing limbs exposed
To Summer’s heat, to Winter’s wet and cold;
Now his half century of use is closed,
His cramp-racked limbs at length are weak and slow.
O’er his last task the old man lagged and dozed,
Espied by Pugson. Labour’s field is large,
And Mattock’s fate is—summary discharge!
Why not ? Must economic law give place
To Mattock’s special need? Forbid it, Sage !
The work-worn clod has run his weary race,
Has spent his manhood’s strength for scanty wage.
Cold Trade ignores the soft superfluous grace
Of sympathy for broken health or age.
What lies before its grey toil-shattered slave ?
Poverty’s dole, the Workhouse and the Grave.
Such long-drawn labour swells the gathering gain
Which makes his masters pillars of the Trade,
Town notables, whose skill and force of brain
Wake platform panegyrics. Scribes upbraid
The banded Craftsmen who, their strength made plain,
Stretch it till Capital shrinks, sore afraid :
Labour wwphalanxed at their feet must cower
Whose tyranny taught it the abuse of power.
’Neath Pugson’s sway intelligence is chilled
And independence crushed ; no human grace
Lightens subjection, labour’s laugh is stilled,
And skill unslavish wears a sullen face.
Like some dull creek by sluggish waters filled
And emptied tide by tide, the grim grey place
At morn and night whilst garish gaslights gleam,
Absorbs and voids a joyless human stream.
Not all are Pug sons truly, and not all
Labour’s great Captains churls austere and mean ;
But Labour knows how oft the toiling thrall
Is slave to Greed, that wolf though gorged still lean,
And still voracious ! Enterprise they call
The hungry thing that has the art to glean
From herded harried thousands tithe and toll,
Squeezed from starved body and from stunted soul.
A feature of the Town which fribbles miss
And optimists ignore. More pleasant far
For Statesmen in postprandial eulogies
Of the mechanic Arts, the conquering car
Of Science, and the bullion-dowered bliss
Of British Enterprise, to hymn the star
Ascendant of the “ Happy Engineer,”
Dimmed only by Trades’ Unions, Strikes, and Beer !
Meanness! Society’s canker, clinging curse
Of civilisation! Thee the cleric lash
Assails not. Does the pulpit dare asperse
The cold close-fisted devotee of cash
Who steals not, cheats not, ventures nothing worse
Than the sharp selfish “ thrift” which does not clash
With any Christian grace,—save now and then
With that vague virtue called “ Goodwill to Men ” ?
Goodwill! Ah, Melibceus, chide no more
Town’s fuming factories, fated birth of time !
Denounce cold hearts, brand the illiberal boor,
Show niggard greed an extra-legal crime.
Goodwill may help the City’s toiling poor,
Who still must live and work midst smoke and grime,
Not, like sham Watteau shepherds, pipe and loll
With knotted sleeves against a grassy knoll!
The Healtheries has a literature of its own. We have received
quite a library of Works on Health from the South Kensington Show.
The latest is a scientific work by “ The Brothers Blobbs,” entitled
Farmer Somebody's Visit to the Healtheries (we’ve forgotten the
exact name, as some unprincipled person has walked off with our
copy),with an account of all he saw, eat, and drank there. It strikes
us that we have heard of “Blobbs” before, in What-you-may-
Corlett’s Sporting and Sportive Journal, but we were not aware
that he had. a brother in the same line of literature. This volume
is one of which the entire Blobbs Family mighty well he proud.
Having brought out this stupendous work, we should strongly advise
the Blobbs Brothers to rest on their laurels, or in their laurels, or
under their laurels,—in fact, wherever they may happen to find
themselves and their laurels. The Farmer's notion of entering the
Healtheries is very funny.
Real Habd-ships.—Ironclads.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
61
THE TOWN.
No. IX.—The Factory.
Who ’ll sing the Chimney ? Not the shuddering hard!
Dew and the soaring lark, the leafy show
Of June-clad woods,
the gloaming
golden-starred,
Church-spire and
mountain-peak—
these freely flow
In limpid verse;
hut the dull en-
gine-yard,
Where swart and
sweating toil
foregathers F No!
The song of
Labour’s life
demands a sweep
De Twitteb’s trim-
built stanzas can-
not keep.
Owner of unearned
thousands, and a
taste,
Bland Melibceus, whose aesthetic eye
A soot-flake shocks, bans the grey city’s waste,
Its sunless yards and shrieking enginery.
The locomotive’s unreposeful haste,
The sordid street, the smoke be-clouded sky,
All from which Ruskin—by fierce words—would free us,
Is evil unredeemed to Melibceus.
Was it the hand of Nature, or of Man
Made metal noisy and made carbon black '
May we hark hack to the Arcadian plan,
The lumbering wain and the deep-rutted track ?
Although he vaunts his tastes Yirgilian,
And finds such music in the mill-wheel’s clack,
Sleek Melibceus lingers in Park Lane,
Dines at his Club, and travels home by train !
Meanwhile the myriad thralls of sooty toil,
Mechanic myrmidons in ant-like throngs,
Sweat to subserve his needs. Foul forges spoil
The human hive as theme for urban songs.
The flaming cauldron and the glowing coal,
The noise, the noisomeness, all that belongs
To Manufacture in the mighty city
Moves Melibceus to contemptuous pity.
Pity ? Let Melibceus come and learn
Broader compassion than the sniffling woe
Of dilettanti; see, how drudges earn
Their starveling pittance. Chilled by winter’s snow,
From dull and distant rookeries out they turn,
Hours ere the London dawn’s first sickly glow
Touches the sky, while drowsing still on down,
Snug lie the moneyed thousands of the Town.
See them throng in \ The bell’s sonorous clang,
Toil’s tocsin, quickens laggard steps. The stout
Look sombre ; some whom fell disease’s fang
Ha* marked may stagger midst the hurrying rout,
But Hunger hides the sharp rheumatic pang ;
The lean-jawed labourer who has long been “ out ”
Crawling from yard to yard in search of work,
For some sharp twinges will not shrink or shirk.
Keen eyes are on him. Bugson’s solemn frown
And sharp rebuke would scathe him did he take
To" long an “ easy.” Pugson, churl and clown,
Has power to make stout Britons cringe and quake.
A man of wide if dubious renown,
Of still vindictiveness which he will slake
In a poor wretch’s ruin, and smile on
The unmoved managerial paragon.
Such his employers deem him. They indeed
Are souls superior, of too high a flight
Au?ht but the gross result of toil to heed,
The individual toiler ’s far too slight
A matter for their thought. Old Mattock's meed
Is his apportioned wage ; this cancels quite
The only claim his steadiest service offers,
Which is not on their conscience but their coffers.
Mattock has served them fifty years or so,
A faithful drudge, his ageing limbs exposed
To Summer’s heat, to Winter’s wet and cold;
Now his half century of use is closed,
His cramp-racked limbs at length are weak and slow.
O’er his last task the old man lagged and dozed,
Espied by Pugson. Labour’s field is large,
And Mattock’s fate is—summary discharge!
Why not ? Must economic law give place
To Mattock’s special need? Forbid it, Sage !
The work-worn clod has run his weary race,
Has spent his manhood’s strength for scanty wage.
Cold Trade ignores the soft superfluous grace
Of sympathy for broken health or age.
What lies before its grey toil-shattered slave ?
Poverty’s dole, the Workhouse and the Grave.
Such long-drawn labour swells the gathering gain
Which makes his masters pillars of the Trade,
Town notables, whose skill and force of brain
Wake platform panegyrics. Scribes upbraid
The banded Craftsmen who, their strength made plain,
Stretch it till Capital shrinks, sore afraid :
Labour wwphalanxed at their feet must cower
Whose tyranny taught it the abuse of power.
’Neath Pugson’s sway intelligence is chilled
And independence crushed ; no human grace
Lightens subjection, labour’s laugh is stilled,
And skill unslavish wears a sullen face.
Like some dull creek by sluggish waters filled
And emptied tide by tide, the grim grey place
At morn and night whilst garish gaslights gleam,
Absorbs and voids a joyless human stream.
Not all are Pug sons truly, and not all
Labour’s great Captains churls austere and mean ;
But Labour knows how oft the toiling thrall
Is slave to Greed, that wolf though gorged still lean,
And still voracious ! Enterprise they call
The hungry thing that has the art to glean
From herded harried thousands tithe and toll,
Squeezed from starved body and from stunted soul.
A feature of the Town which fribbles miss
And optimists ignore. More pleasant far
For Statesmen in postprandial eulogies
Of the mechanic Arts, the conquering car
Of Science, and the bullion-dowered bliss
Of British Enterprise, to hymn the star
Ascendant of the “ Happy Engineer,”
Dimmed only by Trades’ Unions, Strikes, and Beer !
Meanness! Society’s canker, clinging curse
Of civilisation! Thee the cleric lash
Assails not. Does the pulpit dare asperse
The cold close-fisted devotee of cash
Who steals not, cheats not, ventures nothing worse
Than the sharp selfish “ thrift” which does not clash
With any Christian grace,—save now and then
With that vague virtue called “ Goodwill to Men ” ?
Goodwill! Ah, Melibceus, chide no more
Town’s fuming factories, fated birth of time !
Denounce cold hearts, brand the illiberal boor,
Show niggard greed an extra-legal crime.
Goodwill may help the City’s toiling poor,
Who still must live and work midst smoke and grime,
Not, like sham Watteau shepherds, pipe and loll
With knotted sleeves against a grassy knoll!
The Healtheries has a literature of its own. We have received
quite a library of Works on Health from the South Kensington Show.
The latest is a scientific work by “ The Brothers Blobbs,” entitled
Farmer Somebody's Visit to the Healtheries (we’ve forgotten the
exact name, as some unprincipled person has walked off with our
copy),with an account of all he saw, eat, and drank there. It strikes
us that we have heard of “Blobbs” before, in What-you-may-
Corlett’s Sporting and Sportive Journal, but we were not aware
that he had. a brother in the same line of literature. This volume
is one of which the entire Blobbs Family mighty well he proud.
Having brought out this stupendous work, we should strongly advise
the Blobbs Brothers to rest on their laurels, or in their laurels, or
under their laurels,—in fact, wherever they may happen to find
themselves and their laurels. The Farmer's notion of entering the
Healtheries is very funny.
Real Habd-ships.—Ironclads.