REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 39 



examining boards to do their duty, " to keep politics out of exam- 

 ining boards." * But the same trail is just as visible elsewhere. 

 " You think it is the Board of Health," said an Albany delegate, 

 showing how other officials have shirked their duty. " We have 

 been there and made our complaint. They inspect the work 

 brought to their office, they say. I have been to the corpo- 

 ration counsel and can not get any satisfaction. I have been to 

 the district attorney and to the justice of the police court. They 

 laugh at us." f This is the experience always had with the ma- 

 chinery invented to enforce the laws of any despot, be he French 

 or American. The men that refuse to submit to them are too 

 influential to be antagonized with impunity. 



Even if public officials possessed the Spartan virtue of Boy- 

 leau, who, according to the Sire de Joinville, yielded to no influ- 

 ence " de parente, ni d'amys, ni d'or, ni d'argent " ; J even if they 

 were to enforce the law with Draconian rigor, it could and would 

 be evaded. "'There are many ways of killing a cat besides chok- 

 ing him with butter/ " said Mr. Firmin at the Philadelphia conven- 

 tion, " and the law may be obeyed, while it is at the same time 

 practically evaded and violated. No matter," he added, speaking 

 with a professional knowledge that a layman would not presume 

 to question, " how impartial, honest, and competent an inspector 

 may be, in the very nature of things there are one hundred and 

 one ways of putting his eyes out." * Could some legislative 

 genius discover a way to prevent this loss of sight, protection 

 from incompetent or dishonest plumbers would still be impos- 

 sible. " There are a great many things," said Mr. Edward Schus- 

 ter, of St. Louis, at the same convention, " necessary to a first- 

 class job, which do not come under his supervision and which he 

 is not responsible for, and yet they are of so much importance that 

 they can not be omitted." || Of what use, then, is a plumbing 

 law ? Of what use also are inspectors ? 



Still, the bottom of the Pandora box, which " philanthropists " 

 and "benefactors " have stuffed with the evils of such legislation, 

 has not yet been reached. While it does not benefit the honest 

 plumber, it often screens the dishonest one. Here again I do not 

 trust to the conclusions drawn from the doctrine of laissez-faire, 

 nor from the unsupported assertions of prejudice. My statements 

 are none other than those of the master plumbers themselves. 

 " Plumbers imagined," said Mr. Dent Yates at the Detroit con- 

 vention, "that the strictest ordinances (a few of which would 

 make the framers of the Rhode Island blue laws weep with 



* Unpublished Proceedings, Buffalo, 1894, p. 59. f Ibid -> PP- 55 > 56 

 ^ Biographic Universelle, vol. v, p. 436. 



* Proceedings, Philadelphia, 1896, p. 91. j| Ibid., p. 94. 



