University of Virginia Library

3. MACHINERY AND MONEY-MAKING

IN the 'thirties and 'forties the triumphs of applied science and invention had already begun to exert an immediate and far-reaching influence on national prosperity and the economics of industrialism. The views on the new order expressed in Punch reflect, with certain variations, the enlightened moderation of the class of which he was the spokesman. The coming of the age of steam and machinery is welcomed, or accepted, with a tempered optimism. He approaches the subject mainly as a critic or a satirist zealous for reform. But on two notable occasions he assumes the rôle of philosopher and prophet. The first was in January, 1842, à propos of a remark made by Sir Robert Peel that increased demand for manufactures would only increase machine-power:—

Machinery, in its progress, has doubtless been the origin of terrible calamity; it has made the strong man so much live lumber. But as we cannot go back, and must go on, it is for statesmen and philosophers to prepare for the crisis as surely coming as the morning light. How, when machinery is multiplied—as it will be— a thousandfold? How, when tens of thousand-thousand hands are made idle by the ingenuity of the human mind? How, when, comparatively speaking, there shall be no labour for man? Will the multitude lie down and, unrepining, die? We think not—we are sure not. Then will rise and already we hear the murmur—a cry, a shout for an adjustment of interests; a shout that, hard as it is, will strike upon the heart of Mammon, and make the spoiler tremble.

We put this question to Sir Robert Peel: if all labour done by man were suddenly performed by machine power, and that power in the possession of some thousand individuals—what would be the cry of the rest of the race? Would not the shout be, "Share, share"?

The steam-engine, despite of themselves, must and will carry statesmen back to first principles. As it is, machinery is a fiend to the poor; the time will come when it will be a beneficent angel.

On the second occasion, in May, 1844, the note struck in the last sentence is sounded more hopefully. In a fantasy

RAILWAY MAP OF ENGLAND (A PROPHECY)

[Description: Drawing of a "Railway Map of England (a prophecy)," showing England covered with rail lines. ]

entitled "The May Day of Steam," the writer notes the passing of the old May Day and foreshadows Labour's appropriation of that festival; and a speech is put into the mouth of a working man prophesying the ultimate unmitigated good of invention, though its first operation created great inequality and caused misery to the hand-worker. But for the most part Punch is concerned with the dangers and discomforts of the new method of locomotion and the wild speculation to which it gave rise. Railway directors were to him anathema. In his first volume Punch sturdily declares that "the best thing to do for poor Earth to protect her Would be to hang daily a railway director," and of his many railway cartoons perhaps the most effective is that which represents a director sitting on the front buffers of an engine as the best remedy for collisions. The "Impudence of Steam" is satirized in some prophetic verses, one couplet of which is still often quoted:—

But the miseries and discomforts of railway travelling are dwelt on far more frequently than its prospective delights. The first-class alone was endurable, and that was grossly overcharged: the rest had to put up with overcrowding, discomfort, draughts, hard seats, smoke, dust and dirt. Third-class passengers

were negligible and contemptible folk; neither punctuality nor civility was to be expected.

In 1845 the railway mania becomes acute—a "universal epidemic." George Hudson, the Railway King, looms large in the public eye; and Punch expresses his dissatisfaction with M.P.s for dabbling in speculation which they have themselves the opportunity of unduly favouring. Burlesques of various railway projects—centrifugal and atmospheric—abound. Punch ridicules the idea of a railway in the Isle of Wight as unnecessary and calculated to spoil the "Garden of England." The menace to the rural and pastoral amenities of the countryside moves him to eloquent protest. The sufferings of M.P.s before Railway Committees are set forth in the parody of Tennyson's "Mariana in the Moated Grange"; the golden harvest reaped by expert engineering witnesses is resentfully acknowledged; "Jeames" has not escaped the infection and appears frequently as speculator, "stag," and dupe. The Battle of the Gauges had been joined, and Punch asserts that the largest entry in the "railway returns" was that recording the casualties. The Unicorn in the Royal Arms is explained as the "Stag" of railway speculation, and a design of a railway lunatic asylum is submitted as the most appropriate terminus for many of the new schemes. The protests of fox-hunters, noted by Punch, recall the verses of the Cheshire poet:—

The mania was not confined to men: Punch satirizes the ladies who were "stagging it" under the heading "A Doe in the City," and suggests a joint Stock Railway Workhouse as the natural and fitting end of all these operations. This idea is further developed in "Jaques in Capel Court," a parody which begins:—

and after enumerating the various phases of the mania, concludes:—

Railway titles, a railway peerage and Parliament are foreshadowed, with King Hudson, "the monarch of all they `survey,' " installed in his palace at Hampton Court. The relations of John Bull—on whom "the sweet simplicity of the three per cents." had begun to pall—with humbugging promoters is hit off in the stanza:—

In his anti-Puseyite zeal Punch mendaciously declares that a railway from Oxford to Rome has been projected with the Pope's approval. In fact, any stick was good enough to beat the speculators with. "Locksley Hall" is parodied as "Capel Court," and the rush to deposit plans at the Board of Trade,

when special trains were chartered by rival promoters, is described in humorous detail in a Punch ballad. Padded suits are suggested in 1846 as a protection against railway accidents, but the best summary—with all its exaggerations— of the discomforts of railway travelling in the mid 'forties is to be found in the "Rules and Regulations for Railways":—

The French Government has published a royal ordonnance, fixing the regulations that are henceforward to be observed by all railway companies in working their lines. As it is a pity these things should be better managed in France, we publish a set of regulations for English railways. Lord John Russell is welcome to them, if he likes.

Every passenger in the second or third class is to be allowed to carry a dark lantern, or a penny candle, or a safety lamp, into the train with him, as the directors have kept the public in the dark quite long enough.

No train is to travel slower than an omnibus, let the excursion be ever so cheap, or the occasion ever so joyful.

Cattle are to be separated from the passengers as much as possible, as it has been found, from experiments, that men and oxen do not mix sociably together.

No stoppage at a railway station is to exceed half an hour.

No railway dividend is to exceed 100 per cent., and no bonus to be divided oftener than once a month.

No fare is to be raised more than at the rate of a pound a week.

No third-class carriage is to contain more than a foot deep of water in wet weather, but, to prevent accidents, corks and swimming belts should always be kept in open carriages.

The ladies' carriages are to be waited upon by female policemen.

Every tunnel must be illuminated with one candle at least.

Never less than five minutes are to be allowed for dinner or refreshment.[1]

One director must always travel with every train, only he is to be allowed the option of choosing his seat, either in the second or third class—whichever of the two he prefers.

Hospitals are to be built at every terminus, and a surgeon to be in attendance at every station.

There must be some communication between every carriage and the stoker, or the guard, either by a bell, or a speaking tube, or a portable electric telegraph, so that the passengers may have some

A PROPHETIC VIEW OF THE SUBTERRANEAN RAILWAYS

[Description: "A Prophetic View of the Subterranean Railways," a drawing of two subway trains steaming periliously toward each other. ]

means of giving information when their carriage is off the line, or falling over an embankment, or a maniac or a horse has broken loose.

There is sense as well as absurdity in this list. "Smoking saloons" are noted as a novelty on the Eastern Counties Railway during the year 1846, but in the same year to Punch belongs the credit of suggesting refreshment cars, and indulging in a pictorial forecast of underground railways.

The proposal that drums and trombones should be mounted on the engine as a means of signalling cannot be taken seriously. Railway libraries on the L. & N.W.R. are noted as a novelty in 1849. But by that year the temper of the speculating public had changed, and Punch is a faithful index of the cold fit which had followed the disillusionment of the over-sanguine investor. The lure of El Dorado now beckoned from the New World, and the railway madness gave way to the mining insanity. The papers were full of complaints from discontented shareholders. The Battle of the Gauges continued, but Hudson is already spoken of in Punch as a discrowned sovereign, threatened with disestablishment at Madame Tussaud's. For a while Punch was inclined to extend to him a certain amount of sympathy in his downfall, and in "Two Pictures" he draws a contrast between mammon worship and the onslaught on mammon's high priest by his greedy and

discontented worshippers. But the mood of compassion soon changes to resentment in the bitter adaptation of Cowper's poem, The Loss of the Royal George:—

In the same vein are the proposals that Hudson should be the chief "Guy" on November 5, and be appointed governor of a convict settlement on the Isle of Dogs. Simultaneously improvements are noted in the quickening of the transit to Paris, the increase of excursions, and the beginning of voyages de luxe.

But the note of complaint and dissatisfaction prevails. The discomfort, danger, unpunctuality and discourtesy endured by railway passengers are rubbed in with wearisome reiteration. In 1852 Punch ironically comments on the patience of the British public, "content to travel in railway pens, like sheep to the slaughter, injured, deluded, derided, only bleating in return," and concludes his summary of recent protests from correspondents of The Times with the remark:—

Railway accidents, railway frauds, railway impertinence are the staple of our daily newspaper-reading. Railway chairmen and directors are descending to the knavery, extortion, impudence, and brutality from which cabmen are rising in the scale of manners and morals. And, as aforesaid, the British public stands all this with passive mournfulness, quiet endurance, meek, inactive expostulation.

The directors of the L. & N.W.R. are severely criticised for overworking their engine drivers, à propos of a well-authenticated case of a man who had been on duty for thirty

RAILWAY UNDERTAKING
TOUTER: "Going by this train. Sir?"
PASSENGER: "M? Eh? Yes."
TOUTER: "Allow me, then, to give you one of my cards. Sir."

[Description: A gentleman dressed in black offers his card to a workingman loaded down with packages. The card is of a skull and crossbones, and the gentleman stands next to a railway car labelled "SURGERY." ]

hours without relief or opportunity to rest. "If dividends demand economy, and economy necessitates the employment of one man to do the work of six, the only thing to be done for public safety is to get a man with an iron constitution," and Punch accordingly suggests that the directors should provide themselves with engine drivers entirely composed of that metal. Complaints of dangerous railways continue to the end of the period under review, and in 1856 Punch is still of opinion that we might take a leaf out of the book of the Russians, who carry surgeons on their trains. Undertakers he had already suggested as a part of the normal equipment of expresses.

A witty bishop once scandalized his hearers by bracketing Bradshaw with the Bible as an indispensable book. Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables were first issued in 1839; the monthly guide dates from December, 1841; it was not, however, until 1856 that Punch began to realize the elements of comedy underlying that austere document, and utilized them in a little play called Bradshaw: A Mystery, describing the separation, adventures and ultimate reunion of two harassed lovers. Love may laugh at locksmiths, but Bradshaw is another matter. Here is the happy ending of this romantic libel:—

Leonora.
Oh, don't talk of Bradshaw!
Bradshaw has nearly maddened me.

Orlando.
And me.
He talks of trains arriving that ne'er start;
Of trains that seem to start, and ne'er arrive;
Of junctions where no union is effected;
Of coaches meeting trains that never come;
Of trains to catch a coach that never goes;
Of trains that start after they have arrived
Of trains arriving long before they leave.
He bids us "see" some page that can't be found;
Or if 'tis found, it speaks of spots remote
From those we seek to reach! By Bradshaw's aid
You've tried to get to London—I attempted
To get to Liverpool—and here we are,
At Chester—'Tis a junction—I'm content
Our union—at this junction—to cement.
And let us hope, nor you nor I again
May be attacked with Bradshaw on the brain.

Leonora.
I'm happy now! My husband!

Orlando.
Ah, my bride!
Henceforth take me—not Bradshaw—for your guide.
The curtain falls.

"Orlando's" speech is a good summary of the humours of Bradshaw as analysed in Punch's "Comic Guide" some years later.

From steam to electricity the transition is obvious. Punch notes the adoption of the "Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" by the Great Western Railway in the summer of 1844. In 1845 we read of an electric gun to fire 1,000 balls a minute. The laying of a submarine cable from Dover to Calais is discussed in 1846, but was not realized till five years afterwards, when Punch hailed the completion of the scheme as a new link between the two countries and celebrated it in a cartoon and a sonnet.

Already the influence of electricity on international relations had been foreshadowed, and in the same year in which Palmerston repudiated responsibility for the welcome of Kossuth in England Punch rudely described his message as "electric lying." The days of "wireless diplomacy" in the old sense of the epithet were passing, to the embarrassment of representatives who were within immediate hail of the central Government. Soon we begin to hear complaints of the new service on the score of delays and excessive charges, and when an earthquake shock was felt "for the first time" in Ireland in the winter of 1852, Punch notes that a writer in the Limerick Chronicle attributed it to the atmospheric influence of the electric telegraph! Electricity as an illuminant elicited an optimistic if somewhat previous eulogy in 1849; and cooking by electricity is foreshadowed in 1857. The laying of the transatlantic cable is welcomed long before it was an accomplished fact, but Punch's compliments had a sting in their tail when he wrote the following lines:—

Punch's interest in aeronautics dates from his earliest infancy, though his mixture of prophecy and satire is rather confusing.

AERIAL STEAM CARRIAGE

[Description: Illustration entitled "Aerial Steam Carriage," showing a glider named "Fanny Eisler" diving towards a pyramid, to which are tethered several hot air balloons. ]

Designs of aerial steamships abound in his columns; and one of them is not too bad an anticipation of the aeroplane.

In 1845 there was actually a periodical called The Balloon, though Punch is jocular at the expense of its very limited clientèle. Still, though the number of aeronauts was few, their enterprise attracted a great deal of attention, and Green, who made 526 ascents between 1821 and 1852, including his famous trip from Vauxhall to Weilburg in Nassau, is frequently mentioned. Punch, to his credit, inveighed vehemently against the senseless inhumanity of aeronautic acrobats who made a practice of taking up animals with them. He was less fortunate in his dogmatic pronouncement in 1851 that the balloon was a "perfectly useless invention," and in his scornful dismissal, four years later, of the suggestion that it might be useful in warfare:—

Everybody, including, of course, all the nobodies, would seem to have some peculiar plan for finishing off the war in a successful and expeditious manner. The last place we should look for the means of carrying on hostilities with vigour is up in the air; but, nevertheless, an aeronaut has "stepped in" upon the public with a suggestion that balloons are the means required for the siege of Sebastopol and the smashing of Cronstadt. If this theory is correct, Lord Raglan ought at once to be superseded by the "veteran Green" or the "intrepid" Mrs. Graham.

One of the "intrepids," who has gained a high position by his balloon, has published a dialogue between himself and a general, who is, of course, represented as soon beating a retreat in an argument against the employment of balloons in battle. The aeronaut proposes to hover in his balloon over the enemy's position, and take observations of what is passing, but he forgets that a passing shot might happen to catch his eye in a rather disagreeable manner. The aeronaut undertakes not only to observe, but to make himself the subject of observation by a series of signals, through the medium of which he proposes to point out the movements of the enemy. This is to be effected by an apparatus which, as it would of course be at the mercy of the wind, would be blown about in all directions possibly, except that which it ought to take, and thus the signals would be converted into signal failures. The aeronaut also proposes using his balloon for "destructive purposes," by taking up some shells, which should be "light to lift but terrible to fall," and I so arranged as to avoid the fate of Captain Warner's invention, "whose balloon," we are told by the aeronaut himself, "went off in an opposite direction to what he had intended."

"And by what means," answers the general, "would you let off your missiles?"

"Either by fuses," answers the aeronaut, "a liberating trigger, or an electric communication, or by another contrivance which you must excuse me, general, for not mentioning, as I hold it a secret."

This "secret" will probably be kept to all eternity, and, at all events, until it is revealed we must be excused for refusing to call on Lord Aberdeen to adopt balloons for warfare, or to blow up the Commander-in-Chief literally sky high, till he makes the air the basis of military operations.

Some enthusiasts certainly laid themselves open to ridicule. In 1849 a certain J. Browne advertised a "balloon railway to California" as both "safe and cheap." Captain Warner, again, ruled himself out of court by his refusal to explain the secret of his alleged inventions—the long-range torpedo and the bomb-dropping balloon—to the committee appointed to report thereon until he had been assured of the payment of £200,000 for each. Still, he cannot be denied the credit, such as it is, of having foreshadowed two of the deadliest and most destructive engines of modern warfare. Punch at first lent Warner a certain measure of support, until careful inquiry had shown him to be both untrustworthy and intractable.

EFFECT OF THE SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH; OR, PEACE AND GOOD WILL BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE

[Description: Illustration entitled "Effect of the Submarine Telegraph; or, Peace and Good will Between England and France." The illustration shows two angelic female figures moving serenely through an underwater landscapre strewn with skulls and debris; one bewinged woman holds up an olive branch. At the upper corners of the illustration are two rocky coasts: England on the left, France on the right.]

YE WILD-GOOSE CHASE AFTER YE GOLDEN CALFE. THE GOLD CRAZE IN 1849

[Description: Drawing entitled "The Gold Craze in 1849," in which a flock of geese rush toward California (presumably to find gold). ]

The railway "boom" had stimulated that first infirmity of ignoble minds—the desire to "get rich quick"—and cupidity, balked of its expectations, turned eagerly towards the gold-fields to satisfy its longings. In 1849 California was the Mecca of the gold craze, and there is hardly a number of Punch in this year which does not refer to the stampede from Europe to the diggings—"the wild-goose chase after the golden calf," as he called it. It was a gold fever in more senses than one, since the diggers suffered terribly from disease, which led to the cynical suggestion that convicts should be sent there, as they were not likely to return. Cobden, still in high favour with Punch as the apostle of national economy, was busy preaching Peace, Retrenchment and Reform, but his efforts were powerless to stem the tide of speculation.

In 1850 we find a reference to the glut of bullion at the Bank, a state of affairs long strangely unfamiliar. In 1851 the opening of the goldfields in Australia diverted the stream of speculative emigration from California to the antipodes, and this new phase of the auri sacra fames does not escape Punch's notice, though no mention is made of the curious fact that amongst those who were lured to the diggings was Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Marquess of Salisbury. Alongside of the evidences of the great expansion of commerce and national prosperity we find frequent references to the growth of

gambling. In 1852 Punch's pages abound in allusions, in text and illustrations, to the betting mania—to gulls and pigeons and sharks. "Profiteering" was rampant in the Crimean War, and Punch is eloquent in his denunciation of the contractors who supplied shoddy equipment and bad guns. And the aftermath of the war included, besides other familiar sources of discontent, "defalcations, embezzlements and other cases of gross and enormous dishonesty." It was a time of speculation and peculation, of bank smashes and absconding directors—those of the Royal British Bank coming in for special execration. The fraudulent banker is singled out by Punch as the arch-rogue and thief who excited the envy of the burglar, since the banker stole more and escaped unpunished. The brothers Sadleir are specially selected for dishonourable mention in 1856, but John Sadleir, M.P. for Carlow and an ex-Lord of the Treasury, who was the original of Mr. Merdle in Little Dorrit, and was described in The Times after his death as a "national calamity," only escaped punishment by suicide.

As we survey the various new inventions, novel devices and anticipations mentioned in the pages of Punch, we are tempted to exclaim, in the hackneyed phrase, that there is nothing new under the sun. A "Glaciarium" with artificial ice is noted in the autumn of 1843. "Euphonia," or the speaking machine, invented and exhibited by Professor Faber at the Egyptian Hall in 1846, was an automaton, and can hardly be regarded as a lineal ancestor of the gramophone. The "patent mile-index cab" in 1847, on the other hand, was a genuine harbinger of the taxi, but the time was not ripe for its general adoption. Punch's account of "Talking by Telegraph," in the autumn of 1848, is no more than a piece of intelligent anticipation. The telephone voice, however, is happily hit off in the remark that "we have heard of a singer's voice being rather wiry at times; but there will be something very trying in the perpetual twang of the new mode of small talk that is recommended to us," a comment of 1848. The beneficent side of the discovery of anæsthetics is lightly passed over in Punch's earlier references to this revolution in surgery in 1847, which suggest its application to politicians or its use by hen-pecked

husbands. Here only ether is mentioned, but the "blessings of chloroform" are discussed a few months later in the same jocular spirit. Incubators, the sewing machine and phonetic spelling are among the wonders of the wonderful year of 1848. Pitman and the "Fonetik Nuz" furnish Punch with food for mirth in 1849; the claims of the discoverer of "Xyloidine," a new motive power to take the place of steam, are treated with frivolous scepticism more justifiable than that shown by Punch towards ironclads in 1850. In 1851 the novelties included "Electro-biology," i.e. hypnotism; shoeblacks; electric clocks; false legs,[2] invented by Palmer, an American; and the supply of tea to the Navy. "Noiseless wheels" in 1853 suggest the advent of the age of rubber; but Robert W. Thomson had taken out his patent for india-rubber tyres in 1845. Steam ploughs, gas-stoves for cooking and central heating for houses followed in rapid succession in 1853 and 1854. Punch's ironical suggestions in the latter year for the comfort and convenience of Cockney travellers in the ascent of Snowdon are only one of many instances where the mocking fancy of one generation becomes the fact of its successor.

The "new pillar boxes" must be added to the features of 1854; their colour harmonized with the red coats then worn by the postmen; while the scheme to propel mail bags through tubes by atmospheric pressure was put forward as early as 1855. Massage appears as the new "movement cure" by kneading and pressing, vide Punch, 1856, but he, however, was not solely interested in beneficent inventions. Lord Dundonald's famous "secret war plan," originally proposed in 1811, and rejected by a secret Committee presided over by the Duke of York, who pronounced it "infallible, irresistible, but inhuman," was revived after the inventor's readmission to the British Navy, and urged on the Admiralty and Government during the Crimean War. It was again rejected on the score of its inhumanity, though Punch welcomed the plan, without

knowing exactly what it was, and besought the Government to cast away scruples and use anything against such an enemy as Russia. Whatever may have been "Dundonald's plan" was never divulged, it remained a nameless mystery. The new nomenclature evolved by the triumphs of applied science in humaner directions led to a good deal of controversy, notably over the introduction of the word "telegram" as a substitute for "telegraphic despatch." The shorter form was first officially used in 1855 (see the Panmure Papers) by Lord Clarendon, but scholars and men of letters protested vigorously against this Yankee barbarism. Shilleto, the famous Cambridge scholar, suggested "telegrapheme." He did not want it, but it was at least properly constructed on Greek analogies. Oxford, as Punch notices in 1857, supported the modern form, and here for once, at any rate, abandoned her traditional espousal of lost causes.

In general, Punch, as a moderate reformer, deals impartially with the contending claims of science and the classical curriculum. He believed in the liberalizing influence of the humanities, while he denounced academic arrogance, pedantry and exclusiveness. He might be described as a mitigated modernist in these years, in which he advocated the popularization of science by means of Institutes and similar centres of enlightenment, and welcomed new inventions—while reserving to himself the right to burlesque their possibilities, and to ridicule the pretensions of pompous professors and futile philosophers. He was at one with those rationalists who waged war on superstition and credulity, but he realized better than they did how deeply entrenched the enemy was in high places, and how mistaken was the view that the victory was already won. The friendly lines which he addressed to Faraday in 1853 are mere halting doggerel, but they are worth recalling, if only for their sound doctrine, which is as much needed to-day as it was sixty-seven years ago:—