Some Things I don't want in the Building Trades

Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. Some Things I don't want in the Building Trades.

Some Things I don't want in the Building Trades.

I don't want my house put in repair, or rather out of repair, by a master who employs "Jacks of all Trades."

I don't want my foreman to tell me too much at one time about the faults of the workmen under him, as I may forget asking him about himself.

I don't want a builder or carpenter to give a coat of paint to any joinery work he may be doing for me, until I have examined first the material and workmanship.

I don't want any jobbing carpenter or joiner, whom I may employ, to bring a lump of putty in his tool basket. I prefer leave the use of putty to the painters.

I don't want jobbing plumbers to spend three days upon the roof, soldering up a crack in the gutter, and, when done, leaving fresher cracks behind them. The practice is something akin to "cut and come again."

I don't want a contractor to undertake a job at a price that he knows will not pay, and then throw the fault of his bankruptcy on "that blackguard building."

I don't want any more hodmen to be carrying up the weight of themselves in their hod, as well as their bricks; I would much prefer seeing the poor human machines tempering the mortar or wheeling the barrow, while the donkey engine, the hydraulic lift, or the old gray horse, worked the pulley.

I don't want house doors to be made badly, hung badly, or composed of green and unseasoned timber.

I don't want houses built first and designed afterwards, or, rather, wedged into shape, and braced into form.

I don't want to be compelled to pay any workman a fair day's wages for a half day's work.

I don't want an employer to act towards his workmen as if he thought their sinews and thews were of iron, instead of flesh and blood.

I don't want any kind of old rubbish of brick and stone to be bundled into walls and partitions, and then plastered over "hurry-skurry." Trade infamy, like murder, will out, sooner or later.

I don't want men to wear flesh and bone, and waste sweat and blood, in forms of labor to which machinery can be applied, and by which valuable human life and labor can be better and more profitably utilized.

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