ALLIED BUILDING TRADES.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18127, 17 July 1924, Page 4

ALLIED BUILDING TRADES.

j MEETING OF ASSOCIATION, j LECTURE BY MR CLARK. ! A meetiug of the Allied Building | Trades Association was held on Tuea» ! day night, Mr Dean presiding over a good attendance. Members expressed their appreciation of the work of the Progress League, and the specimens of _ their publicity folders sent to the Exhibition were favourably commented on. The new Apprentices Act was discussed. Mr Collins reporting that the Painters' Apprenticeship Committee had held a meeting and transacted a considerable amount of preliniinnrj' j •work. They also sent a remit to Mr Justice Frazor, and trusted his Honour would give favourable consideration to their suggestion. Arrangements were made for a meeting of the Apprenticeship Committee' set up by various branches of the trade for Thursday, the 24th iust., at 7.30 p.m. Sub-Contracting. After the transaction of general business, Mr Alfred Clark gave an address on "The Decay of Workmanship iri the Building Industry." Mr Clark prefaced his address "by a few remarks on the evilß of the sub-contracting system general in New Zealand, which he characterised as the curse of the building industry. He referred to sub-contractors as financial agents for merchants. He humorously described the average builder's plant as a concrete board, two petrol tins, and a borrowed wheel-barrow. On a point of order being raised he generously conceded that some builders even had three petrol tins and a wheelbarrow on the hire purchase system. In the course of his address proper Mr Clark staled that the educational system of the past thirty vears, coupled with the Technical Schools, and cheap literature dealing with _ scicnco and art of building construction, should, on the face of it, have produced a large percentage of super-craftsmen. Yet those who were intimately connected with the building industry knew that the majority of the "artisans" employed in the industry were painfully incompetent. In the building industry of New Zealand, there was too much Subdivision of labour. The specialisation on parts had become too easy a mechanical dexterity, only perfecting the practice, and not stimulating tho interest or enlarging the mind. Consequently there was 7ess congenial desire to do work well, than there had ever been. It would be unfair to blame the workman wholly or chiefly for this. The practical and theoretical leaders of the building industry of New Zealand had consistently placed cheapness and raniditv of production above every other aim and principle. A recent controversy in the _ Auckland newspapers on the bricklaying trndo showed an Auckland architect asserting that men. after a few weeks' training, could lav 1000 bricks in eisrht hours. It would be just as possible for these same men to draw plans after the same numbers of weeks-* training. This last division of labour had made the workman a producer, nbt of the finished article, but of parts wTiich did not nroduce the same immediate sense of wonder and utility, and could not in the same degree bless the work of the worker unawares by unconsciously drawincr conscience into labour. The seven vears' apprenticeship system thatwas formerly the inexorable rule in all forms of Fnfflish itidustrv. had become the exception „in New Zealand. Apprenticeship. The old apprenticeship system enabled a man to know good work and to do it, and to take pride in doing it weU, oectiuse lie niiew its worm. Ihe actual practice as it was known to all of us was tnat tho craftsman's energy was directed, not so mucn in doing work well, as to getting work done with. There were plenty of workmen who were quite capable of doing good work, who would not take the trouble to exert all their skill and attention, for to get it done, and done with, andj put any sort of cheap finish on. it anyhow, was too frequently the object. There was no doubt that the apprenticeship system, in this country as the building trades were concerned was slovenly., The apprentices were, as it were, turned loose to act as fags and to pick up their trade anyhow. The great majority never had the opportunity of learning the higher branches of their respective trades, because of the specialisation of parts. We Soe in the plastering trade apprentices who spent practically the whole of the time doing ordinary work of plastering of the domestic dwellings. At the end of their apprenticeship they were specialists in their two or three coat work. Eventually these specialists became sub-contractors and took on apprentices to leam the same semi-skil-rul drudgery. It was mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he did not find pleasure, and surely thie branch of plastering trade came under the category of pleasureless occupation. The sa'me story could bo told of all other branches of the building trade.

"Rule of Thumb.** There- was too much rule of thumb in the building trade, and this involved loss oi time, labour, and materials. and held from the artisan that feeling of wonder and delight that was the reward of knowledge. This country 6orely needed a school for artisans who had reached the youth of old age —a school where none under thirty years of age would be allowed to attend, and where the secrets and mysteries of organic craftsmanship could be disseminated by practical and capable craftsmen. Such a school would raise the standard of craftsmanship in this country, a very desirable object from a national viewpoint. The incompetency of the artisans, in the building industry was equalled only by the incompetency of the builders and architects. Every builder and architect, in .New Zealand knew the incompetency of the other fellow. Now the artisan and the builder were fttlly conscious of their shortcomings, but the bad architect was usually unconscious of his. Often his practical practioe was entirely disproportionate to his abilities and it was quite likely to happen that the worst would have the greatest number of jobs. "When a bad architect slipped he usually .did it in a thoroughly wholesale and barefaced manner. It was really possible for a thoroughly incompetent architect to build up ah immense practice, out of pure concentrated badness, and tho point was that: "the evil these men do lives after them." The bad architect was in fact, the natural product of a society in which architecture was a fine art not appreciated. Very few people knew what architecture really was, fewer still appreciated it, and so long as architecture was unappreciated by the people who paid for it; so long would they bo found who would measure art by cost, or by size or by anything but a genuine artistic standard. "Architecture in this city of church is one long story of halftruths," bo said. "We see tenders called for brick houses. The plans and specifica■iaons reveal a wood Bouse with an eternal veneer of brick. Wo see dummy rafters and purlins and joints projecting, marble columns mfede of jin slabs and capped with ordinary plaster tinted to represent bronze, concrete work faked to represent stone, and a whole host ci half truths too 'numerous to mention. It is a story of the decay of xrorkmanslup in the building trade of New ZcobJid £rcm. ii:a WEfcitfiea