Taxation

The theme for this blog is the iconography relating to ‘Taxation’. Part of my PhD involved researching digital images of taxation during the Victorian era. I have decided to illustrate my work using a cartoon from Fun from 1885, and by way of comparison a similar cartoon on taxation from the Western Mail a few years later.

The Income-Tax thermometer “rising rapidly”

Fun 18 March 1885

Fun together with Judy represented the main rivals to Punch in the UK in the late nineteenth century. Fun was liberal in its political leanings like Punch unlike the conservative minded Judy. The initials of the artist, JG, indicate that it was John Gordon Thomson, a regular contributor to Fun.

In my PhD review of images of taxation, most of the images I discovered occurred in Punch which provided commentary for most years when an annual budget occurred. This image from Fun is a rare example. I can find no explanation for Fun deciding to create a cartoon for this specific budget.

The dominant icon in the cartoon is a thermometer/barometer and references the ever- increasing rates of income tax (x number of d in the pound). John Bull, the icon for the British tax- payer, is depicted almost bald with hair frizzled, frazzled. The temperature gauge reflects the potential reaction of John Bull to tax increases. If it were raised to 2d that would be (mere) botheration, if raised to 5d that would amount to vexation, by the time it reached 7d that would result in recrimination, and if it reached 10d that would amount to desperation. The weather gauge indicates stormy weather ahead. In the corner there is a bust of the GOM, William Ewart Gladstone.

Gladstone was viewed as the architect of much fiscal policy in the Victorian era. He is associated with concepts such as annual budgets and balanced budgets. The head of the bust is facing the reader, inviting the reader to engage with the author of the budget (Gladstone was the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time). For over thirty years successive governments had followed fiscal policies laid out by Gladstone in his famous budget of 1853. Hence the bust, both literally and figuratively embodies Gladstone’s role.

In the previous three years income tax had moved from 5d to 6 1/2d in the pound and back to 5d and most recently in the previous year 1884/5 to 6d. Thus, any reader well-versed in fiscal matters would have seen that the artist was conveying a sense of vexation at the rate of tax already being at 5d.

The move to 6d and the actual move in the 1885 budget to increase income tax to 8d signalled that the artist was concerned that the tax paying public would turn against the government for increasing income taxes above 7d. The rising costs of war did ultimately cost the ruling Liberals their parliamentary majority in the summer months and an election was called for late 1885.

The cartoon is dated February 1885, before the actual budget proposals were released in April. It reflects parliamentary discussion (there was no budget purdah at that time) on potential steps the government could adopt in the fiscal arena. Given that the readership included MPs the cartoon could be said to inform and influence their views on the route to take in fiscal matters.

The message in the cartoon is that John Bull is none too pleased at the trend towards higher and higher rates of income tax. John Bull is a taxpayer so does not represent all the population. Though by this time it would only have been the working class that would not have been subject to income tax.

The reference to stormy weather ahead is reinforced by John Bull having an umbrella by his side ready to open if the heavens (literally) opened and rained increased taxes. Visual metaphor for expected reaction to proposed increase in taxes. The cartoon depicts visual metaphors on weather ranging from ‘gauging the temperature’ – the potential reaction to proposed increases, or ‘stormy weather’ - barometric allusion to inclement weather ahead)

The veneration accorded to Gladstone is evidenced firstly by his bust, an event accorded to famous people. Secondly the reference on the bust to ‘GOM’ alludes to his nomenclature, the Grand Old Man, a reference to the esteem and longevity of his political career.

The cartoon is not a full page and does have any accompanying text. Most of the cartoons of taxation I uncovered were full page cartoons from Punch, indicating that they were the main editorial focus of that week’s issue. The positioning of this image in Fun (away from the main cartoon covering the Russians’ incursion into Afghanistan, ‘the road to Herat’), indicates that the editor viewed the Afghan cartoon to be more important for that week’s issue. Indeed, a review of the themes illustrated in the central main cartoon of each of the satiric periodicals of the period is essential to understand the nature of the editorial decision to allocate a cartoon to one rather than another competing ‘theme of the week’.

The use of the thermometer/barometer to indicate attitudes towards taxation is reminiscent of an earlier stylistic device. Forty years previously cartoons depicted the debates over whether to reduce trade tariffs using the visual metaphor of ‘sliding scales’ (the reference to graduated rates of tax for particular goods). This association with previous iconography is illustrated in the next image from the Western Mail, sixteen years later.

Sultry weather, Western Mail, 25 February 1901.

The Western Mail was a conservative leaning Cardiff newspaper, the largest provincial paper in the country. It had a long tradition of including cartoons in its paper- the use of illustrations being a major focus in 1890s as the ‘new journalism’ vogue took off. J. M. Staniforth was one of several important well-known contemporary cartoonists of the period (cf Sir John Tenniel, Harry Furniss and Linley Sambourne at Punch, Francis Carruthers Gould at the Westminster Gazette).

The context for the cartoon is the ever-increasing cost of the Boer War which had started in 1899 and would continue until May 1902. For more detail on the Boer War which is to be subject of my course to be delivered to the Oxford Department of Continuing Education in January 2020 see my next blog.

Staniforth’s reference to this earlier cartoon in his own cartoon of 1901 is clear. Firstly, there is the use of the thermometer to indicate visually the ‘temperature’ in relation to the rising costs of taxation. Secondly, there is the similarity of the depiction and confusion on the face of John Bull. Finally, the Staniforth cartoon is entitled ‘Sultry weather’, a reference back to the ‘stormy weather’ of the Fun cartoon.

In both cartoons John Bull is depicted as a well-off country squire, indicated by the boots he is wearing and his hat. His fondness of eating is indicated by his girth. In both cases John Bull’s appearance indicates he can afford the increase in taxes even if the rise in taxes troubled him. In both cases John Bull is carrying an umbrella. In the Staniforth cartoon John Bull is looking to his right at the thermometer whilst in the Fun cartoon John Bull is looking to his left.

The Fun cartoon depicts John Bull with glasses peering at the large barometer in front of him- suggesting he is short-sighted, another pun perhaps reflecting the evenness of the artist’s message. John Bull may be objecting to the projected increases in income tax, but was it all in a good cause?

Staniforth by contrast depicts John Bull looking clearly (without the aid of glasses this time) at the barometer in front of him. The inference could be that he understood fully the implications of the military increases but approved of them reluctantly.

Fun’s use of the £ sign wrapped inside a bag (of monies) indicates rather neatly that the barometer refers to income taxes being collected. Staniforth by contrast just uses text, namely the ‘monetary cost of the war’ to indicate none too subtly what the numbers on the barometer refer to.

Whereas the Fun cartoon uses the temperature gauge to indicate the rises in the rate of income tax, the Staniforth cartoon expresses the increases in terms of the quantum of taxes. The accompanying text offers the commentary that the glass (the pressure on the taxpayer) is going up by a degree and a quarter (a million and a quarter).

The umbrella in Fun’s cartoon refers to the pun on stormy weather. In Staniforth’s cartoon the pun is in the accompanying text which refers to the amount of rain he is experiencing lately. The pun is on the words ‘D.wet’ – a reference to the Boer general De Wet who at the time of the cartoon had been causing the British military some annoyance with his successful use of guerrilla warfare tactics against them. The previous month De Wet had invaded Cape Colony a state which had a predominance of Boers in the population- he successfully stirred them up and kept the fight alive. At the same time Kitchener’s forces attempted unsuccessfully to capture him. And, of course ‘wet’ refers to the inclement weather, hence the umbrella. The reference to the ‘glass going up’ refers to another pun on weather - this time that if the weather glass goes up the weather turns bad, literally and figuratively in this case. The higher the glass the worse the weather was going to be (here in terms of the military costs going up and up). The barometer is ornate in the Fun cartoon befitting Gladstone’s status. By contrast the barometer in the later cartoon appears more modern, more utilitarian.

Staniforth’s cartoon originally appeared in the Western Mail, and Staniforth cartoons also appeared in the Sunday News of the World. This cartoon was subsequently included in a collection ‘Cartoons of the Boer War’ Vols 1 & 2 with accompanying text for each cartoon providing increased contextual commentary. Whereas newspaper cartoons could be viewed as transitory, the newspaper being discarded shortly after it appeared, the reissue of cartoons in bound volumes spoke to sophisticated marketing campaigns. The volumes sold in their thousands, so this is another example (alongside Punch’s recurring reissue of volumes and special anniversary editions) of the repetitive impact of cartoon messaging. This is reflected by the newspaper’s decision to reissue the cartoons and the artist’s use of icons from earlier periods. The repetitive use of icons to message specific themes is a specific focus of my research.

The commentary to these cartoons provides a sense of hindsight (even though the volumes were published very shortly after the end of the war in mid- 1902). Here the commentary says: ‘cheerfully though he paid it, the cost of the war troubled the English tax-payer a good deal, especially when he saw his war barometer rising at the rate of upwards of a million pounds a week’. The cheerfulness referred to here is not overtly depicted in the cartoon- it is inferred from the well-off rotund John Bull scratching his head, philosophically rather than cheerfully, at the increasing costs. He can bear the extra cost, willingly, but cheerfully is perhaps too much to be inferred.

The barometer indicates that the overall cost of the war at the time of the cartoon was in excess of £80m. Was there any significance in barometer showing upper scale of £90m. Similarly, is there any significance in the starting scale at £50m? Would the contemporary readership have appreciated the scale of war costs? Would todays readership have any context themselves? The cost of the war was estimated at over 80m by end of 1901 (£800m in 2014 terms). Ever since the Crimea war in the 1850s Britain had been incurring significant military expenditure, so the quantum was not necessarily so shocking, merely the consistent large increase of the current war? The final cost of war (as at the end of May 1902) in Victorian terms was £200m, so the taxpayer had much more pain to come.

If you want to find out more about Staniforth there is a superb collection of his cartoons to be found on a website curated by Chris Williams, Cartooning the Road to War.

In my next blog I will be covering images of the Boer War from British and French sources.