become anything better than their parents had been because in such
cases the children, when they grew up, 'looked down' upon and were
ashamed of their fathers and mothers! They seemed to think that if
they loved and did their duty to their children, the probability was
that the children would prove ungrateful: as if even if that were true,
it would be any excuse for their indifference.

Another cause of the shortage of work was the intrusion into the trade
of so many outsiders: fellows like Sawkins and the other lightweights.
Whatever other causes there were, there could be no doubt that the
hurrying and scamping was a very real one. Every 'job' had to be done
at once! as if it were a matter of life or death! It must be finished
by a certain time. If the 'job' was at an empty house, Misery's yarn
was that it was let! the people were coming in at the end of the week!
therefore everything must be finished by Wednesday night. All the
ceilings had to be washed off, the walls stripped and repapered, and
two coats of paint inside and outside the house. New drains were to be
put in, and all broken windows and locks and broken plaster repaired.
A number of men--usually about half as many as there should have
been--would be sent to do the work, and one man was put in charge of
the 'job'. These sub-foremen or 'coddies' knew that if they 'made
their jobs pay' they would be put in charge of others and be kept on in
preference to other men as long as the firm had any work; so they
helped Misery to scheme and scamp the work and watched and drove the
men under their charge; and these latter poor wretches, knowing that
their only chance of retaining their employment was to 'tear into it',
tore into it like so many maniacs. Instead of cleaning any parts of
the woodwork that were greasy or very dirty, they brushed them over
with a coat of spirit varnish before painting to make sure that the
paint would dry: places where the plaster of the walls was damaged were
repaired with what was humorously called 'garden cement'--which was the
technical term for dirt out of the garden--and the surface was skimmed
over with proper material. Ceilings that were not very dirty were not
washed off, but dusted, and lightly gone over with a thin coat of
whitewash. The old paper was often left upon the wails of rooms that
were supposed to be stripped before being repapered, and to conceal
this the joints of the old paper were rubbed down so that the