would not be possible for one "unfamiliar with their history to imagine that any labor could ever have been in a more despicable condition. "I have served a sufficient time," said an official essayist[1] at the Detroit convention of master plumbers, "when the plumber was regarded as somewhat of a scavenger."[2] How shockingly degraded was the condition of these honest toilers is made still more vivid by the powerful picture of another essayist. "At that time," he said, alluding to the same distressing period, "the term 'master plumber' was a misnomer; he was a slave—slave to the tyranny of established business customs, slave to the reckless, demoralizing practices of dealers, slave to an embittered and hostile public sentiment, slave to the meanest drudgery and sacrifices of the trade, slave to his own weakness and submission."[3] After speaking of the convention as composed of men "gathered together with no thought of pecuniary reward, to enhance the common welfare of man, to present and discuss the best means of preventing the ravages of disease with its resulting misery and woe," he declared, with rhythmic eloquence on another occasion, that "their profession has made them philanthropists, and their love of mankind has made them benefactors."[4] The power that wrought this miracle is the organization and legislation that have weeded out "the so-called master plumbers who do not understand their business," who, in consequence "jeopardize the health of the public," and who, through ignorance as to how plumbing should be done, "figure and take work at prices which can not be met by those who are skilled and desire to do good work."[5]
Here we come in contact with the true spirit that animates every modern trade and professional corporation. Without exception, they are struggling, like the old feudal corporations, to limit competition and to secure a monopoly of labor and trade. The plumbers may find much pleasure in calling themselves "philanthropists" and "benefactors"; they may strive laboriously to lift themselves to the plane of "professional sanitarians," ranking, to use the fine phrases of an official essayist, with "God's nobleman, the honest physician";[6] but their real object, however concealed under the alluring garb of rhetoric and sentiment, is to get the largest amount of money for the smallest amount of
- ↑ The National Convention of the Master Plumbers has a Committee on Essays, which makes up a list of subjects and selects the best essays on them to be read before the convention. The views set forth in these essays, which are published in the regular reports of the proceedings, may therefore be regarded as "official."
- ↑ Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 167.
- ↑ Proceedings, Cincinnati, 1891, p. 129.
- ↑ Proceedings, Denver, 1890, p. 86.
- ↑ Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 38.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 95.
