Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3808/Progress
["Giving evidence recently before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, Miss C. E. Collet, of the Home Office, said the commercial laundry was killing the small hand laundry."—Evening News.]
The little crafts! How soon they die!
In cottage doors no shuttle clicks;
The hand-loom has been ousted by
A large concern with lots more sticks.
The throb of pistons beats around;
Great chimneys rise on Thames's banks;
The same phenomena are found
In Sheffield (Yorks) and Oldham (Lancs).
No longer now the housewife makes
Her rare preserves, for what's the good?
The factory round the corner fakes
Raspberry jam with chips of wood.
'Tis so with what we eat and wear,
Our bread, the boots wherein we splosh;
"Tis so with what I deemed most fair,
Most virginal of all—the Wash.
'Tis this that chiefly, when I chant,
Fulfils my breast with sighs of ruth,
To think that engines can supplant
The Amazons I loved in youth.
That not with tender care, as erst
By spinster females fancy-free,
These button-holes of mine get burst
Before the shift comes back to me;
That mere machines, and not a maid
With fingers fatuously plied,
The collars and the cuffs have frayed
That still excoriate my hide;
That steam reduces to such states
What once was marred by human skill;
That socks are sundered from their mates
By means of an electric mill;
That not by Cupid's coy advance
(Some crone conniving at the fraud),
But simply by mechanic chance,
I get this handkerchief marked "Maud."
This is, indeed, a striking change;
I sometimes wonder if the world
Gets better as the skies grow strange
With coils of smoke about them curled.
If the old days were not the best
Ere printed formulas conveyed
Sorrow about that silken vest
For all eternity mislaid;
Ere yet the unwieldy motor-van
Came clattering round the kerbstone's brink,
Its driver dreaming some new plan
To make my mauve pyjamas shrink.