envy) would be a big bonanza. . . . But some of the self-same ordinances, designed to protect the good, conscientious plumber, have here and there acted as a screen for the quack plumber and fat for the ward bummer and the grog-shop politicians."[1] Is this not saying, as was once said to a French despot, that for every office he was pleased to make God was pleased to make a fool to fill it? With a touch of bitter disappointment over honest toil gone for naught, Mr. Firmin declared, in the essay quoted from already, that the plumbers that had "endeavored to be just to their fellow-men," that had "given their best thought "to" devising improved methods of practical sanitation,"that" could point to the improved standard of plumbing as a part of their labors,"had" not been rewarded in anything like a just ratio. . . . I might," he added in a tone of deeper disappointment, "even say in an everyday dollars-and-cents view," that they "have not directly benefited at all."[2]
The most serious evil remains to be mentioned, for it falls upon the very persons whose benefit is, in the eyes of the "philanthropists" and "benefactors," its sole justification. Instead of making them more alert to protect themselves from the dangers that assail them and to secure the services of the most expert to aid them in this difficult task, it creates in them a state of indifference. Conscious that benevolent statesmen have made laws to keep them from harm, they fancy that it is no longer needful for them to take thought of the morrow. Plumbers themselves, with all their ardent faith in legislation, have not been able to shut their eyes to this peril. More than once have the thoughtful among them called attention to "overconfidence on the part of the architect and the general public" in "the cure-all-ism of the plumbing law." "This danger is at once serious to the public and to ourselves as business men," said the Sanitary Committee at the Philadelphia convention.[3] "We found," said Mr. Firmin, also, "that the public has come to rely to a dangerous degree upon plumbing laws. . . . The danger lies," he added, "in the fact that the public believe that all plumbers, by virtue of the law's operation, are compelled to produce equal and certain results, and that if they have a certain piece of work to be performed it will make no difference whether they give the job to Jones or Brown. . . . Therein they fall into error, injuring themselves, as well as the honest plumber. They remove the incentive to progression and honesty." The Sanitary Committee takes the same view in almost the same words. "There has arisen a belief," it says, "that now it is not necessary to use care in the choice of your
