I don't want a builder or carpenter to give a coat of paint to any joinery work he may be doing for me, until I have examined first the material and workmanship.
I don't want any jobbing carpenter or joiner, whom I may employ, to bring a lump of putty in his tool basket. I prefer leave the use of putty to the painters.
I don't want jobbing plumbers to spend three days upon the roof, soldering up a crack in the gutter, and, when done, leaving fresher cracks behind them. The practice is something akin to "cut and come again."
I don't want a contractor to undertake a job at a price that he knows will not pay, and then throw the fault of his bankruptcy on "that blackguard building."
I don't want any more hodmen to be carrying up the weight of themselves in their hod, as well as their bricks; I would much prefer seeing the poor human machines tempering the mortar or wheeling the barrow, while the donkey engine, the hydraulic lift, or the old gray horse, worked the pulley.
I don't want house doors to be made badly, hung badly, or composed of green and unseasoned timber.
I don't want houses built first and designed afterwards, or, rather, wedged into shape, and braced into form.
I don't want to be compelled to pay any workman a fair day's wages for a half day's work.
I don't want an employer to act towards his workmen as if he thought their sinews and thews were of iron, instead of flesh and blood.
I don't want any kind of old rubbish of brick and stone to be bundled into walls and partitions, and then plastered over "hurry-skurry." Trade infamy, like murder, will out, sooner or later.