MORE ANSWERS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 50, 4 October 1907, Page 3

MORE ANSWERS.

[By " W.B."] Were I as assured as my unknown friend in your last issue seems to be, that my exposure of trade frauds will diminish their popularity, and assist to hasten the millenium of honest work and humane employage, toward which the evolution of social ethics are trending, and bring cheap-jacks, nigger-driving time thieves, and trade rival detractors to their proper vocation—knapping stones by the roadside—l would cheerfully devote a long and varied experience to attain so desirable a consummation. This, to me, would be no uncongenial task, for I delight in smiting hip and thigh all shams and hypocrisies, the practice of which is to me an unspeakable abomination. Thus, when the shicer, who pretends what he is not; the rogue, who buys a stack of secondclass boards, and selecting those of fewest shakes, and turning the best side out, makes them appear, and charges for them as first; who works in old weather desiccated yard job lots, where they will not be noticed ; who, to save the wages of a helper, sets one man to put in blocks, where the man, who knows his work, sets two—and good men at that; who wants those blocks in, no matter whether their surface beds the stringer evenly, or whether they are level as a foundation; or, further, whether they are rammed down to stand the driving of a three inch nail; whose ghastly ignorance of building pride and builder's rules is of such deadly density, that when he has to build new work on to old, and that old has settled out of level, it is his duty to build the new addition plumb and level, and humour the uneven by wood with the countless expedients, which to the clever workman straightway suggest themselves, but which "the mountebank cannot even think of, and, therefore, bungles his new work to the old with a bewildering amateurish anamorphosis, that the ignoble thing he calls a heart, but is instead an indurated cartilage of gangrene greed and cruelty, may gloat over his criminal deceit.. A modern epigram has it that " few men are heroes to their valets." This we may paraphrase into : " The jerry builder is a known fraud to his painter !" For it is he who putties and covers defects with elegant oil tints, which exalt the fame of the shameless pretender into the "trade expert," the smart workman.

My unknown friend desires me to " include bricklayers and their methods " on my denunciations. This it gives me some pleasure to do ; for when Mr Jerry Builder and Mr Jerry Bricky act in unison, then happen accidents which defraud insurance companies and make 'crowner's quests' scratch a puzzled poll over miraculous concatenations of mysteries they fail to grasp, but, which to those who see these rogues 'at work, aye the palpable results of scamped work; of mortar mixed with pumice earth, or road mullock, in proportions, which is justly proportioned to make the scanty lime do the job, instead of sharp river sand as specified, but of slightly more expense; of this mess touched on the joints and ends, and is practically all the bindage the bricks are bedded in, and which a trowelstroke or two on the outside forms into a gaudy show, of "pointing," and may he pushed in when dry with a gentle finger- thrust; of breasts and shafts run up unparged; of an inch and a half—and more—gather, where three quarters is the safe load rule; all of which bare-faced, scamping Mr Jerry Builder tacitly connives at by neglecting a frequent supervision, and thus enhances Mr Jerry , Bricky's reputation as " the man to put a job through!" All this I have seen, and wondered at the crass credulity of the guileless listener to the vacuous claptrap, which repeats the fallacy that " smart" W?6r-k is cheap, "but forgets that also it is (i nasty." It is for these novices of the scamper's tricks these admonitions are here indicated, and that they may just stoop and glance up inside the while these " smart" impersonators jauntily imperil valuable household goods, treasured hQivlooms, and lives of wife and child! has a hard row to hoe, to rout these shoddy rascals out!