The women are said to take the place of fathers as well as husbands, while the men are idle and drunken.... At Bromsgrove I heard also of the growing custom of idle, lazy young lads looking out for skilled industrious wives, in order to obtain an easy life. [Sidenote: _Men, Women and Dogs_] It was, as _Punch_ puts it, an inversion of the old legend of Penthesilea and the Amazons. Women were unsexed by labour and serfdom. As for the men:-- _You_ loaf, train your whippets, and guzzle and gorge, While they sweat at the anvil, and puddle and forge. So at the time of distress in the mining districts in 1875 the miners are accused of using charitable relief for the welfare of their dogs rather than of their families. "How is it," asks a benevolent directress, "you've brought two cans to-day, Geordie?" And a miner on strike replies: "The yain's for my mither, marm, and t'uther for the greyhound." [Illustration: "TEMPORA MUTANTUR" FARMER'S DAUGHTER: "I say, Jem, fancy! Mother said to me to-day I was to help in the Dairy, and might help in the Milking! Because she did when she was a Girl! I said I'd go for a Gov'ness first!"] There is little mention of the hardships of life on the land, though labourers' wages were still very low; but the rise of the farmer class to "gentility" is noted in 1885 in the picture of the farmer's daughter seated at the piano and declaring that she would rather go as a governess than help in the dairy. _Punch's_ sympathies were more readily enlisted on behalf of shop and saloon girls. The movement began in Bristol in 1876, where a number of ladies issued a circular to employers asking that chairs should be provided for shop girls; the plan was adopted in Manchester, and, following the lead of Lancashire, _Punch_ repeatedly urges the plea for more considerate treatment. The matter was "beyond a joke," and _Punch_ recommended ladies to patronize shops where they were allowed, and boycott others. The subject was taken up by the _Lancet_, and the movement spread to Scotland, where a group of ladies made a personal tour of inspection in Edinburgh to see which shops provided seats. One of _Punch's_ pictures in this year shows a considerate customer handing a chair over the counter to a tired shop-girl, and a set of verses describes a girl driven into sin by need of rest. As he put it in his plea for "More Seats and Shorter Hours," "A country where humanity interposes on behalf of an over-driven cab-horse will surely not go on suffering hard-working, weak and defenceless girls to be driven to death with impunity." There was only one other place in which seats are not allowed. "That is the House of Commons, but there the torture is only inflicted on one-half of the Members." We hear little nowadays of the hardships of shop-girls, but the seating accommodation of the House of Commons is even more inadequate than in 1880. _Punch_, however, discussed Sir John