REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 35 



of his fellow- men, and enjoys the dignity and consideration given 

 to the learned professions about him." * But the destruction of 

 personal liberty and the establishment of a monopoly in labor and 

 trade did not confer these blessings upon the corporations of the 

 middle ages ; they have not conferred them upon their modern 

 successors. Brief as their history is, it discloses all the traits of 

 their predecessors in embryo or in an advanced state of growth. 

 They have not transformed human nature ; they have not made it 

 more honest, generous, or sympathetic. All they have done is to 

 add another to the countless demonstrations that the reform of 

 human society is not to come from legislation. They have pro- 

 voked strife ; they have stimulated deception ; they have favored 

 incompetency and dishonesty; they have discouraged character 

 and excellence; they have created false hopes; they have pro- 

 duced indifference to the very dangers they were designed to 

 guard against. 



The honest plumbers that expected most from this kind of 

 legislation have suffered the greatest disappointment. The 

 making of master plumbers, said Mr. Edward Braden, of San 

 Antonio, Texas, at the Cleveland convention, " is a Herculean job. 

 They love to go to conventions, have a good time, and even ridi- 

 cule any advancement or strict enforcement of the sanitary 

 laws." f So great does the task appear to be, and so vast is the 

 work still to be done, that it must long remain incomplete. More 

 than that, unless a different course is pursued, it must always 

 remain incomplete. "It would seem," says another plumbing 

 authority, " to be a safe assertion that too many [plumbers] do 

 not have a true conception of the dignity of their calling. Their 

 dominant idea is to do the cheapest work without much thought 

 of the moral obligations resting upon them to guard in every 

 way in their power the health of all concerned." J The president 

 of the Milwaukee convention complained that "in several in- 

 stances parties, after becoming members of the National Associa- 

 tion," have " endeavored to use their membership to keep other 

 practical and worthy plumbers out." * Not finding the time ripe 

 for such mediaeval proscription, some of them have preferred to 

 forego the benefits of the association. Other plumbers, equally 

 oblivious to the " dignity of their calling," have been dishonest 

 enough to conspire with the jobbers and consumers to violate the 

 sanctity of the Baltimore resolutions. One of the more striking 

 cases was the collusion of a plumber and jobber in one State with 

 a consumer in another several hundred miles away. || " Many 



* Proceedings, Cincinnati, 1891, pp. 129, 131. f Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 96. 

 \ Proceedings, Washington, D. C., 1892, p. 80. * Proceedings, Milwaukee, 1893, p. 71. 

 U Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 145. 



