This well-merited castigation preceded the protests of the "Indignant Ratepayers" by a couple of years, but it is more truly representative of _Punch's_ convictions on the main question. We had to educate our masters, and we must not squeal over the bill--provided the education was sound. On that point _Punch_ was by no means satisfied, and in 1887 he invokes the testimony of the British workmen, who is made to protest against the unpractical nature of modern education, and the undue prominence assigned to the 'ologies and 'ometries. A cartoon in 1888 represents Education betrayed by its "friends"--pedantry and jobbery. Over-pressure was aggravated by under-feeding and under-housing. As for the former, _Punch_ prints an East End remonstrance against the penny rate: "When we wants daily bread it ain't any good saying you only wants 'that there penny.'" But the steady growth of State expenditure on education is resented on the ground that it was devoted to inappropriate or unnecessary objects. In 1891 _Punch_ publishes a forecast of the Exasperated Public protesting against the ever-increasing extravagance of the London School Board, who have taken to building observatories and raised the salaries of elementary teachers to £2,500 a year. This is burlesque, but there is criticism and dissatisfaction at the back of it. So when the Bill providing for "assisted" (i.e. Free) Education, for which the Budget surplus of £2,000,000 was to be devoted, was introduced in the same year, _Punch_ represented the cross-currents of the Unionist Party in his cartoon. Mother Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is seen introducing her adopted child (Free Education), whom she had found in Birmingham, to the Old Tory Party (Mrs. Gamp), who doesn't like the looks of him at all. But Goschen carried his point--that the Government were pledged to alleviate the burden which compulsory education had, in recent years, imposed upon the poorer portion of the people; and by September 1 the free education proposals of the Government were generally adopted throughout the country by both Board and Voluntary Schools.