"Rather. He had been properly educated, and knew the time of day, and there are few things he ever had to do with he did not get a bit 'extra' out of. On that you can bet the family plate."
"Right you are. Old partner, do you know I have a weakness. I liked the old times when there was plenty of work to be had, and few that knew how to do it. Then the likes of you and me were regarded at their proper value, and estimated as worth something extra. Now there are about a million too many of us, and not half the work to be done. Old England is not like a big place that wants opening up, and it is a rare high old breeding country, and a lot of folks seem to wish it to be nothing else.
"My then partner took, labour only, a lot of brickwork in cement. It was a dock wall, and it averaged not far from 20 feet in thickness. It was a wall, and not a mere facing like little bridges. It gave a man a chance of something to work on. When a chap takes a contract, labour only, not having to find the materials, it is no use turning your attention to saving them; the only game to play is to use the mortar nearly liquid, so that it runs about of itself almost, and put some random work in between the face work and the back, and trust to mortar-rakes and grout, and oiling the human wheels as much as required. I don't like the word bribe the inspectors. For two chaps like us, that will have what we consider good work, it is not bribery, it is downright pure philanthropy that prompts us to give a sovereign away now and then in the proper and most deserving direction, which I generally find to be the inspector. I never give gold away without knowing it will come back well married, and may bring a family, and they are welcome to my best spread. That's just where our education enables us to grasp things right. What a shame it is for people to find fault with the School Board rate, when it is only about four times more than its promised highest figure, and the school buildings are such models of art and strength; and how thankful we ought to be to the teachers for their kind attendance, given for almost nothing! How pleased our old schoolmaster would be when he knew we took every advantage to make a profit somehow or other from what he taught us."
"I guess he would be, the joy might kill him; but how did you apply your schooling to the brickwork?"
"Wait, patience please! As I said before, or nearly did, there was not much face work compared with bulk in the wall. I had a lot of militia chaps, and well paid and lushed them. They were something like brickies. Bless me, the wall used to rise up; and I was half afraid if those at the office worked out the check time, and compared it with our cubic measurement, they would think I was paying all my chaps more than any other member of creation ever did, or making too big a profit to suit them, and don't you mistake. But there! the Company did the work themselves, or let it in bits, and of course the check-time game was not played anything like so strong as if we had been working for a boss contractor.
"Well, we were doing trench work, and had shoots for the materials to travel from the surface down to the wall, and the trench was about 50 feet in depth from the top to the foundation. We had one shoot for bricks and another for mortar in between each frame, and that would have been plenty if all the work had been laid to a bond, but when only about 4 feet in the front and 2 feet at the back was, and the rest raked in level, except a course or two now and again, we used to want a couple of shoots for each. I had the face of the wall made really pretty, just like a doll's house, and pointed up lovely; but let me give a bit of credit to the Company, for they gave us the best materials with which I ever had to do."
"You mean the bricks and mortar were such that it would have been a downright waste of good muscle to put the bond the same throughout, simply pampering up the materials and turning them sickly, like some people do children, so as to appear so fond of them before other people!"
"Precisely; so after my partner got the face in right, the stuff went down and in. All we had to be careful about was not to smash the bricks. We soon managed that, and we had few broken ones, for they were good, hard, and dark. Well, in they went, and when we began to work the show, some of the scenery was hard to get right. Of course the inspector began to find fault, that was what he was paid for, and was about the only way he could work round for his 'extras.' After oiling him a little, and pleasing him in the old-fashioned way, we managed gradually to overcome the natural dulness of his mind, and we became a happy crew—a lot of brickies with a single thought, and hearts that beat as one.
"Well, in the stuff went; and after working out the averages according to the rules of the exact sciences, me and my partner arrived at the conclusion accordingly that about one-half or a trifle more bricks were put in by hand, and the rest were like machine-made bread, unsoiled by hand, and therefore must have been good and pure, as those alone know who work on the same lines. My partner, in his younger days, before he took to brickwork, had been to sea, and all the men used to call him 'Captain.' When he wanted to give the chaps in the office the straight griffin, he used to say, 'Nelson's my guide.' That meant give them 'biff,' in other words, finish off the enemy as quick as you know how."
"You mean get the bricks in as fast as you can only get them in quick."