London . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 0 0
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Leaving total outlay of . . . . . . L34 0 0
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I am conscious that to a townsman, accustomed to the wastefulness of
towns, some parts of this account must appear incredible. Take, for
instance, the bill for labour. No one has ever lived in London without
having occasion to complain of the dearness and badness of labour. The
chief object of the town artisan is to do as little work as possible.
He is absolutely without conscience in his work, and all that he does
is slovenly. He surveys a job, and meditates upon it for an hour--at
your expense; begins it, and goes away to fetch a tool that he has
forgotten--the time of his absence being duly charged against you;
procrastinates and dawdles; sits down to read the paper, if no one
watches him; and in one way and another takes quite twice as long over
a job as is needed, and then does it badly. When I first became a
householder in London I naturally sent to some neighbouring employer of
labour for any little jobs of carpentering and plumbing that needed to
be done. I soon had to relinquish the practice. If a new latch were
put upon a window, the screws were driven into the old holes, so that
in a week the latch was off again. If the plumber effected one repair
he invariably left some damage that made it necessary to recall him
before the month was out. There are houses in London which must be as
good as an annuity to local tradesmen; I believe the workmen are
instructed to do their work so badly that it is never really done. I
soon found it wise to learn how to do repairs for myself; and it was by
doing them myself that I discovered how I had been victimised by the
rapacity, dishonesty, and inefficiency of the British workman and his