IN CHIMNEY-POT LAND

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 217, 7 June 1919, Page 9

IN CHIMNEY-POT LAND

INTERVIEW WITH THE KING'S SWEEP. Mr. Jenkins, the King's sweep, has been telling an interviewer that it is quite possible for a master sweep in a 6mall way of business to • make £7. a week (writes a correspondent). And anyont. who inquires into the curious ways of the trade will agree that he earns it. Of course small sweeps, known to the people of an earlier generation as "climbing boys," no longer explore the sooty heights of a chimney when sweeping is toward. That was done away with more than thirty years ago, and sweeps' apprentices of to-day must .be .over sixteen, and even then must be registered. But, in point of fact, the boys of to-day are not at all eager to be sweeps,, and anapprentice is a rarity. The man who engages himself to a master sweep had to be out aud about at four o'clook in the morning, His first business is to leave something of the general way of building chimneys and then something of how roofs are planned. It is only the small master eweeps who still use the jomtea rods and brush, known collectively as u "machine." The operators on a tagger scale use the rope and ball. The men on the roof lowers the ball, whioh dfags through tho ohimney the ropes to which the circular brush is Gaa fires do not do away entirely 'with the need for a periodical visit from the sweep. Only ivlien tho electric em sots in will Ms plaintive voice ceaee to be heard in our land.