Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/19

Rh workmen, artisans and labour sub-contractors of the lowest kind in character and quality of work; 'field rangers' they are called. Not one quarter of the working builders about London are efficient 'tradesmen,' worth their wages. All the rest are spoiled, or have been grievously arrested in development by sub-contracting and the present architectural and leasehold systems. These poor men accept from their employers the discovered measure of the 'public taste' and need, and do their work appropriately. Speculating builders will provide such workmanship as they can get; but they can hardly care to do good work for people who habitually show that this is not the thing they want, and that it is, in fact, beyond their understanding and appreciation.

Here, then, we have a second numerous and wide-spread class perverted and used up by this pernicious system. When the public execrate their painful leasehold houses their chief outcry is against the speculating builders; but these builders are not half as much to blame as their accusers, who, without these men, it seems, would have no houses to complain of. Speculating builders are but a result of public folly. As a class they are not culpably successful at the public cost, nor are they so beholden to mankind that they should sacrifice themselves to architectural philanthropy. Their object, quite legitimate according to the public will, is to contrive as many houses as they can within a given frontage, then to make these houses stand awhile, and then, with careful promptitude, to sell them. The superior public, who are taught to think that architecture 'as a fine art' is the only fitting subject for their contemplation, and that cordial acquaintance with the simple art of building, and with building artisans, is 'low,' when they experience the result of their absurd neglect, are disappointed, injured, irritated, and in their dismay they blame the speculating builders, who are only instruments; they never seem to recognize the real cause of their affliction.

Now let the truth be known: with all the great defects of