794 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



words. They are a condemnation of technical education. Never 

 were the feudal corporations guilty of anything more retrogres- 

 sive, or more subversive of their own interests or the interests of 

 the public. 



It is but just to say that as yet the master plumbers have not 

 established an apprenticeship or a journey manship despotism. 

 But that they are not lacking in the spirit that leads to both is 

 manifest from their efforts to control the retail trade, which have 

 been more persistent and systematic, and therefore more suc- 

 cessful. Ever since the National Association was organized, they 

 have striven to put a stop to the traffic between jobbers and con- 

 sumers. So twisted have become the moral perceptions of the 

 master plumber that deprivation of the profits from this traffic 

 appears hardly less reprehensible than a fraud. "The jobbing 

 houses," says the report of the vice-president of the Minnesota As- 

 sociation to the Detroit convention, calling attention to this spe- 

 cies of crime, " are selling material to general contractors and 

 owners of buildings, and hiring a plumber by the day to do the 

 work, thus doing the boss plumber out of the profit that right- 

 fully belongs to him." * Because of such a perversion of the 

 ethics of trade, the natural fruit of organization and monopoly, 

 it has almost ceased to be possible for corporations and the owers 

 of large buildings, not to speak of the smaller and less influential 

 victims of the " philanthropists " and " benefactors," either to do 

 any part of their own plumbing or to get from a dealer the sup- 

 plies needed for the work.f The definition of a plumber has been 

 so narrowed that it does not apply to plumbers in the employ of 

 either of these classes ; and the definition of plumbing materials 

 has been so broadened that it includes everything that a plumber 

 handles. " I believe," said a New York delegate to the Cleveland 

 convention, setting forth the view that has generally been adopt- 

 ed, "that everything that we handle is plumbing goods. I be- 

 lieve the meter, and the pump, and the range, and everything in 

 a specification called for in the plumbing line, and which we have 

 to handle, is plumbing goods." J To such refinements has the 

 lexicography of the plumbing trade been carried that a distinc- 

 tion has been drawn between plumbing goods that can and those 

 that can not be sold to a shipbuilder, without the intervention of 



* Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 67. 



f In 1894 Mr. Oakes A. Ames and other large property owners attempted to get the 

 following reasonable amendment made to the Massachusetts plumbing law : " Any person 

 may, by himself, or his usual employees, without obtaining a plumber's license," as pro- 

 vided by the law, " do any proper plumbing work upon his own premises, and in doing such 

 work shall not be restricted to the use of plumbing materials that can not be purchased in 

 open market." But the amendment, which was denounced by so enlightened a journal as 

 the Boston Herald, was defeated. % Proceedings, Cleveland, 1 896, p. 89. 



