examining boards to do their duty, "to keep politics out of examining boards."[1] But the same trail is just as visible elsewhere. "You think it is the Board of Health," said an Albany delegate, showing how other officials have shirked their duty. "We have been there and made our complaint. They inspect the work brought to their office, they say. I have been to the corporation counsel and can not get any satisfaction. I have been to the district attorney and to the justice of the police court. They laugh at us."[2] This is the experience always had with the machinery invented to enforce the laws of any despot, be he French or American. The men that refuse to submit to them are too influential to be antagonized with impunity.
Even if public officials possessed the Spartan virtue of Boyleau, who, according to the Sire de Joinville, yielded to no influence "de parente, ni d'amys, ni d'or, ni d'argent";[3] even if they were to enforce the law with Draconian rigor, it could and would be evaded. "'There are many ways of killing a cat besides choking him with butter,'" said Mr. Firmin at the Philadelphia convention, "and the law may be obeyed, while it is at the same time practically evaded and violated. No matter," he added, speaking with a professional knowledge that a layman would not presume to question, "how impartial, honest, and competent an inspector may be, in the very nature of things there are one hundred and one ways of putting his eyes out."[4] Could some legislative genius discover a way to prevent this loss of sight, protection from incompetent or dishonest plumbers would still be impossible. "There are a great many things," said Mr. Edward Schuster, of St. Louis, at the same convention, "necessary to a first-class job, which do not come under his supervision and which he is not responsible for, and yet they are of so much importance that they can not be omitted."[5] Of what use, then, is a plumbing law? Of what use also are inspectors?
Still, the bottom of the Pandora box, which "philanthropists" and "benefactors" have stuffed with the evils of such legislation, has not yet been reached. While it does not benefit the honest plumber, it often screens the dishonest one. Here again I do not trust to the conclusions drawn from the doctrine of laissez-faire, nor from the unsupported assertions of prejudice. My statements are none other than those of the master plumbers themselves. "Plumbers imagined," said Mr. Dent Yates at the Detroit convention, "that the strictest ordinances (a few of which would make the framers of the Rhode Island blue laws weep with
