The introduction of an eight hours' day, already vigorously agitated for, set _Punch_ thinking on what would happen if the principle were logically applied all round--to the Courts, restaurants, theatres and the medical profession. He returned to the subject in the following year, and came to much the same conclusion--that it would turn out a new bed of Procrustes, on the ground that the universal uniformity of hours of work could not be established without inflicting serious injury on the workers. Socialism still continued to preoccupy _Punch_ in 1890. This time it is depicted as a snake attacking an eagle in mid-air, rather a strange inversion of natural history. The eagle is _Trade_, the wings are _Labour_ and _Capital_. The prosaic critic will ask how the snake got there except on the wings of a soaring imagination. John Burns is still a favourite _bête noire_, and is severely rebuked for his dictatorial and aggressive speeches at the Trade Union Congress and his action in connexion with industrial trouble on the Clyde, the ghost of Robert Burns being invoked to chastise his namesake in an adaptation of "The Dumfries Volunteer." At the Congress John Burns had said that he was "in the unfortunate position of having probably to go to Parliament at the next election, but he would rather go to prison half a dozen times than to Parliament once.... He must know on what terms he must do the dirty work of going to Parliament." This was not a happy utterance, though it hardly merited _Punch's_ bludgeoning. Burns was "perhaps Boanerges spelt little": he "laid about him like mules who can kick hard"; "the mustard had gone to his nose," etc. But in view of the way in which Mr. Burns sank without a ripple from public notice in August, 1914, there is point in the caution:-- [Sidenote: _The Coal Strike of 1890_] Be warned in good time--why there isn't a man, Sir, Or at most one or two, whom the universe misses; You strut for a moment, and then, like poor _Anser_, You vanish, uncared for, with splutter and hisses. [Illustration: THE NEW "QUEEN OF THE MAY"]