Plumbing, in its advancement, is merely keeping pace with the allied lines on which it is dependent. Their progress has created new conditions to be met; and as the future plumber will hail from the ranks of the populace, the light in which the public regards the plumber and the importance of his trade will have no uncertain bearing on the character and earnestness of those who take up the calling. The rank and file of apprentices have already too long been attracted merely on the score of a promising means of livelihood. There is ample reason to begin a plumbing career with all the pride felt by followers of any other vocation. It is altogether improbable that any individual will be found with so much education or such promising ability as to give rise to just grounds of fear that plumbing will not offer him sufficient scope to acquit himself with dignity.

The advent of tall buildings, the general increase in the height and other proportions of buildings in cities, and the changes in material and in design of fixtures, together with the abnormal demand resulting from the decreased cost, natural growth, and gradual awakening through education to the value of sanitary conveniences, have brought about a condition of affairs which the old-line plumbers were incapable of coping with, and which the old apprenticeship system was inadequate to provide men capable of dealing with in a creditable manner. The plumbing of one large building involves as much work as hundreds of the average small jobs put together. The handling of such work under the conditions that have prevailed, has developed a deplorable state of so-called "specialism." Men engaged in "rough-ing-in" a large job are likely to tell you with entire truthfulness that they have no idea what types of closets or other fixtures are to be used; that they know nothing of the principles or merits of plumbing fixtures, and do not need to; that they never connected a fixture in their whole career; that the finishers do that kind of work. By further inquiry one would find the "finishers" utterly at sea in the work of "roughing-in," and accordingly ignorant of the whys and wherefores that govern the success of a job as a unit. These men, called "plumbers," are exceedingly skilful and rapid within their limitations; but it is easy to infer the fate of a job intrusted to such hands alone, and in practice it has been proven that others of metropolitan practice, and merely lacking in variety of experience, were not capable of credit; able results on general residence work of the ordinary class.

When the largest jobs were completed in a comparatively short time, and when much of the training which went to make up the plumber's accomplishments was credited to the manual practice necessary to master the working of lead and solder, a period of service in shop and job practice, coupled with oral instructions from the journeyman, served fairly well to make a plumber out of raw material within the period allotted by the American abridgment of the apprenticeship term. On the work of to-day, however, there would be great chances of an apprentice serving such a term without seeing anything of more than from two to five jobs. He would be lucky if it fell to his lot to get even a little experience in each of the natural divisions of those jobs; and again fortunate if those jobs happened not to have the same general layout or to employ identically the same make of fixtures, for there are many shops which seem to have the faculty of securing work from certain particular sources, and which are equally likely for one reason or another to be recommending and using, where possible, one particular make of goods to the exclusion of other kinds just as good or better. These and kindred features now met with on every hand in practice, are stumbling-blocks - prohibitive, in fact, of anyone learning the plumbing trade within any period of time that can sensibly be prescribed for the acquiring of a trade or profession.

For more than a decade, the often-avowed reluctance of journeymen to teach apprentices has been held responsible for the trend of these affairs affecting the practice of the industry; but in the light of what has been said, it is easy to determine what it was that really introduced the Plumbing Correspondence School and Plumbing Trade Classes. It was necessity. Trade journals have done and are still doing good work in this line; but their best efforts, added to the opportunities of practice, were insufficient. There was no other satisfactory solution than the Correspondence School - no other route to the acquisition of principles and acquaintanceship with the accumulated information as to the relative merit or fitness of certain materials, designs, systems, etc., and as to the conditions under which this or that would serve well, while it might act just the reverse under other circumstances.

Under the present regime, it is not only apprentices and those who intend becoming such, but journeymen as well, that need to seek aid in the schools. The citizen at large, also, serves his own interest in informing himself in a general way at the same fountain, so as to be able to discriminate for himself in matters pertaining to plumbing. Furthermore, any real plumber would prefer that his customer should be familiar with the work in hand. Fewer misunderstandings occur when such is the case, and there is a keener appreciation of good work on one hand and a corresponding effort to merit approval on the other. There is, too, in favor of the plumber, when the customer is informed, an absence of those niggardly tactics of trying to secure much for little, of sacrificing quality and future satisfaction by reducing first cost below the safe limit. The well-informed customer never makes you feel that all plumbing is alike to him and a necessary evil to be paid for at rates far in excess of its value.

With the foregoing introduction in mind let us look further into the subject and see what "Plumbing" really is. Whether we are actual or self-nominated apprentices, journeymen, masters, or the prospective customer himself, a view of the matter will be beneficial, if only in the sense of refreshing memory.

There was a time when sanitary conveniences, crude in comparison with the present, were considered mere luxuries. Under the present views of life and the conditions of living, we may with greater propriety consider these erstwhile luxuries as actual necessities, though they are often luxurious to a degree that dwarfs into insignificance other appointments which even then were granted to be essentials. Plumbing is, therefore, neither in fact nor in opinion, a matter of simple luxury for the rich and delicate, but is, rather, an important subject of deep salutary interest on the one hand and of business acumen on the other - a matter of essentials deeply affecting the best interests of our own health and that of our neighbors, with which mere sentiment has no ground for association. The time when it was thought sufficient to fan out the mosquitoes in summer and break the ice in winter at the family rain barrel in order to wash our faces and hands, has passed. A dwelling job may now embrace almost the entire range of plumbing fixtures. There is therefore no better example from which to build a word-picture of Plumbing.