CURRENT LITERATURE.
Plumbers' Work, Past and Present. A Brief Commentary and a Descriptive Account of the Museum and Workshops Established by the Worshipful Company of Plumbers at King's College, London, for the Extension of the Technical Training of Student Plumbers. (Copyrighted, we suppose, by the Company itself.)— This is a really interesting little book, containing not only a very interesting account of the education given, under the superin- tendence of the Plumbers' Company, to plumbers who are anxious to master the scientific side of their calling, as it must be, and is, mastered by every architect of the least pretension to supply a proper system of drainage to his buildings, but also a very curious account of the old and disused drainage works discovered at Somerset House by the servants of the Company in the area allotted to them for their use as a technical school. Good plumbing is not merely the work of a trade but of a profession, and cannot be properly pursued except by those who have learned a good deal about physics and chemistry, as well as the mere handicraft which satisfied the old tradesmen called plumbers. No doubt much of the bad plumbing, which now, we hope, is likely before long to become a thing of the past, was due to mere dishonesty, to a wish to do cheaply and ill, work for which the plumber intended to be paid as if it had been done thoroughly and well. But it was partly because the plumbers did not know how terrible are the evils which they caused by letting foul gases into the houses of their customers, because they did not know enough of physics and chemistry to appreciate the conditions, and the sanitary mischiefs of bad plumbing, that dishonesty in the per- formance of their work was thought to be so excuseable. This little book points out how much it is necessary for a thoroughly good plumber to know, if he is to be the efficient instrument of the sanitary authorities, and shows us how the Worshipful Company of Plumbers (established in the reign of Edward III.) has recently formed classes and made a museum for the express purpose of . teaching young plumbers the scientific conditions of their work. , In fact they have established a sort of College for the students of
this highly scientific art, and its authorities give certificates of the competency of those who attend the classes and subsequently pass the examinations by which their mastery of the lessons given them has been tested. The account of the old and disused drainage works discovered at Somerset House by the plumbers employed by the Company is also very curious, and is illustrated by some exceedingly good plates. If plumbers get as much knowledge as the Company propose to give them, they will, we think, be not
only morally but also intellectually ashamed not to use it effectually
in the various items of the work they take in hand. Sound scientific knowledge is almost as great a guarantee against bad work as honesty of purpose itself. Indeed the latter without the former is quite insufficient, while the former even without the latter will usually secure sound work, even though it need not prevent over- charging.
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