I have read your paper since its first issue and take a great deal of interest in its contents. I have endeavored to get you some subscribers from among the plumbers here in Bridgeport, but find they don't readily take hold, there being but two or three who are really to be trusted with a piece of work.

In your issue of November 1, 1879, the article on plumbers doing crooked work takes the right view of the matter, and all should be punished who deserve it; and if a plumber is not, who does a piece of work that deals a death-blow to many an innocent person, then we should like to know what is criminal, and who should be punished?

It is only a few months ago that a plumber did some work with water-closets, sink, and wash-basin, without so much as a trap under any of them, and all wastes were carried to drain through 4-inch galvanized sheet-iron, soldered together, although the specifications called for traps and cast-iron soil-pipe and ventilation, but the owner was the superintendent, and he allowed the work to be done in this crooked manner; but he had to get another plumber in a month, and rip it out and have it done over again. It would have paid him to have employed his architect to do the superintending.

This same plumber only last week repeated nearly the same thing in two tenement-houses, using for wastes sheet galvanized-iron, and not carrying up to attic and connecting with flue for ventilation. The latter he thought entirely unnecessary, although it was specified, and he had agreed to do it so; but as there was an architect superintending it, it was pulled out immediately, though some of it was covered in the walls. The plumber was politely requested to make it right just as quick as he could - and he did it. The sooner all such "skin" plumbers as this are out of the business, I should think, it would be better for the community at large; but perhaps the employment of such is due to the subcontract system, which is a very great evil where good mechanics and good work could be had by owners of buildings if they would but employ them direct, and not leave their work to a general contractor.

Diphtheria and scarlet fever have had their day. Only last summer a gentleman bought a house, went to reside in it, and before he had been there long he lost his children, and nearly his wife, by scarlet fever, and on examination of the plumbing it was found to be without traps and emptying into a drain running under five or six other houses, all dropping down into the same drain. This was a speculative builder's work, and, of course, what could be expected from one without principle, who does it merely for gain?

What should be the penalty that should be inflicted on parties who do such scamping, and thereby commit murder, or worse? And is there not some legislation necessary on this point?"

It is not surprising that the so-called "plumbers" described by our correspondent don't take readily to our paper. When the community at large are more familiar with its columns, it will not be so easy for such fellows to get a chance to poison some family. There are good men in the business in Bridgeport, and architects should insist that no others should be allowed to work under them, for no architect, however vigilant, can secure good work from a botch or safe work from a knave. If sickness or death follow from "scamped" plumbing, the man who did the work is largely to blame, and should be made to suffer the consequences.