The Wall Street Journal on Brick Layers

There is reason to apprehend that bricklayers will become as uncomlnon as the veterans of the war of 1812. When one reflects on the princely wages of bricklayers, it is a lamentable thought that they have to die, but, as with all thq world's great, no way has been found to save them frorrl this unhappy fate. An occasional veteran of the war of l8l2 is recruited by fraud, and an occasional apprentice is admittedr to membership in the Bricklayer's lJnion, but in neither case does the number of recruits begin to equal the mortality list.

The National Association of Manufacturers says that the number of apprentices admitted to the Bricklayer's Union last year was less than half the number of members taken by death. At this rate, bricklaying will soon become a lost art, and our grandchildren will marvel at our skill in laying brick as we wonder at the lost processes of our remote ancestors who understood and practiced the tempering of copper. The passing of the plasterers gives even greater reason for apprehension and disquietude, because they are passing even faster than the bricklayers. We replenish our streams with trout, and we protect our song birds from exter,mination, but we take no thought of our plasterers. By reason of the limitation of apprentices, most of our plasterers are aged men, and will not be with us lo1g. The years are not many which we shall regard with awe the last survivor of t'he Plasterer's tfnion very much as we regard the last survivor of the charge at Balaklava.

With the grorrving scientific interest in these matters, it is not unlikely that the professors at our institutions of learnirg will soon undertake a study of this dissappearing type as they do the small remnant of some of the aboriginal tribes. While there is yet time, we suggest that there be preserved on the phonograph for future generations the voice of a plasterer discussing long hours and slave wag'es, for the era i.s not remote when all we shall know of the species must come from a study of the fossil remains.

What antiquarian interest will there soon be in a fragment of freshly spread plaster ! We can see the last plasterer a centenarian, on his deathbed, painfully but skillfully spreading this fragment, at the rate permitted under union rules, for preservation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, alongside the fragment of King Tut's flagon.-Wall Street Journal.

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