The Triumph of Labour: Walter Crane’s Cartoons for the Cause (1896)

By all accounts, the 1896 gathering of the International Workers’ Congress, held in London’s Queen’s Hall on Langham Place, was a chaotic affair. A surfeit of celebrities — George Bernard Shaw, Emmeline Pankhurst, Peter Kropotkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Jean Jaurès — seems not to have quieted the tenor of the discussion. “It was Babel and Bedlam rolled into one”, the published proceedings admitted. At issue was the participation of anarchists in the activities of the Second International; ostensibly expelled at the 1893 Zurich Congress, several — including Kropotkin and Paul Delessalle — had snuck back in as trade unionists. Fights ensued, and from that point on, anarchism and socialism were more or less at odds.

At least, as the 775 delegates returned home, they could nurse their broken spirits with Cartoons for the Cause. The volume was compiled from images by the preeminent socialist illustrator Walter Crane, who wrote in a preface how he hoped the twelve plates, plus two poems and a “fable”, would

form a not inappropriate souvenir of the International Congress of July, 1896, when workers and Socialists from all parts of the world will meet in London; and, it is to be hoped, the occasion will be the means of strengthening the ties of international brotherhood, and consolidating those common interests of humanity which makes for Peace and social progress; as well as giving an immense stimulus to the great movement towards the new era, when, society renewed upon a sound economic basis, the earth shall be for man and the fullness thereof.

Alas.

The collection brought together a selection of the political cartoons Crane had been publishing in the radical press — The Clarion, Justice, Commonweal — since 1885, plus an opening plate designed specially for the occasion: a handsome Englishman in a Phrygian cap, opening his arms to representatives of the twenty countries who were descending on the city. “International solidarity of labour”, the caption reads: “the true answer to ‘jingoism’”.

Other cartoons warned of dangers. “The Vampire”, one of Crane’s most famous images, shows a laborer collapsed on a pile of rubble, being savaged by a winged creature helpfully labeled “Religious Hypocrisy”, “Capitalism”, and “Party Politics”. Luckily, an avenging angel with the trumpet of Socialism is on her way. The following image shows an old woman (“Parliamentary Government”) hoarding land, capital, wages, profits, and tram shares from a begging child (“Unemployed”).

Nevertheless, it is in the inspirational images that one feels Crane’s fervency. A children’s book illustrator by trade, a doyen of the Arts and Crafts movement, and a latter-day Pre-Raphaelite, his style is better suited to the utopian images of the second half of the album. The socialist utopia of the Victorians was, Eric Hobsbawm wrote, replete with “imagery of spring and flowers, of harvest . . . of girls in light flowing dresses and Phrygian bonnets. Ceres was the goddess of communism.” The densely illustrated “Triumph of Labour” that Crane had designed for an 1891 May Day is a case in point: men on laden carts, chubby children with floral wreaths, the winged goddess of Victory at the lead. Despite the failure of the Paris Commune in 1871, Crane’s is a fundamentally optimistic vision, looking forward to a future of abundance for all.

(If you’d like to spread the cause a little further, we have a couple of Crane’s cartoons available as prints and Fair Wear t-shirts (here and here) in our shop. All proceeds go toward sustaining The Public Domain Review’s own utopic project.)