of his fellow-men, and enjoys the dignity and consideration given to the learned professions about him."[1] But the destruction of personal liberty and the establishment of a monopoly in labor and trade did not confer these blessings upon the corporations of the middle ages; they have not conferred them upon their modern successors. Brief as their history is, it discloses all the traits of their predecessors in embryo or in an advanced state of growth. They have not transformed human nature; they have not made it more honest, generous, or sympathetic. All they have done is to add another to the countless demonstrations that the reform of human society is not to come from legislation. They have provoked strife; they have stimulated deception; they have favored incompetency and dishonesty; they have discouraged character and excellence; they have created false hopes; they have produced indifference to the very dangers they were designed to guard against.
The honest plumbers that expected most from this kind of legislation have suffered the greatest disappointment. The making of master plumbers, said Mr. Edward Braden, of San Antonio, Texas, at the Cleveland convention, "is a Herculean job. They love to go to conventions, have a good time, and even ridicule any advancement or strict enforcement of the sanitary laws."[2] So great does the task appear to be, and so vast is the work still to be done, that it must long remain incomplete. More than that, unless a different course is pursued, it must always remain incomplete. "It would seem," says another plumbing authority, "to be a safe assertion that too many [plumbers] do not have a true conception of the dignity of their calling. Their dominant idea is to do the cheapest work without much thought of the moral obligations resting upon them to guard in every way in their power the health of all concerned."[3] The president of the Milwaukee convention complained that "in several instances parties, after becoming members of the National Association," have "endeavored to use their membership to keep other practical and worthy plumbers out."[4] Not finding the time ripe for such mediæval proscription, some of them have preferred to forego the benefits of the association. Other plumbers, equally oblivious to the "dignity of their calling," have been dishonest enough to conspire with the jobbers and consumers to violate the sanctity of the Baltimore resolutions. One of the more striking cases was the collusion of a plumber and jobber in one State with a consumer in another several hundred miles away.[5] "Many
