John Newman - Scamping Tricks and Odd Knowledge

PREFACE.

The following pages have been written with the view to record a few scamping tricks occasionally practised upon public works, and to name some methods founded on practical experience adopted by sub-contractors and others to cheaply and quickly execute work.

All who have had the direction or charge of an extensive or even comparatively insignificant public enterprise will agree that it is impossible for a resident or contractor's engineer to know the manner in which everything is proceeding on his division, and in some measure he is compelled to rely upon others; nevertheless, it is quite as important to ascertain that the work is carried out according to the specification and drawings as to elaborate a perfect specification and then have to partly leave the execution to the care of the beneficent fairies.

If a finger-post has been correctly pointed in the direction in which a favourable field for scamping tricks may exist, the author's object in writing this book will have been attained.

To the less experienced, the incidents and scrap-knowledge described may be more particularly useful, and on consideration it was thought that the conversational tone adopted would best expose the subject and indicate the ethics of somewhat conscience-proof sub-contractors and workmen, and also the way in which their earnest endeavours to practise the science of scamping may be exercised upon materials and under circumstances not especially referred to herein.

J. N.

London, 1891.

CONTENTS.

SCAMPING TRICKS

AND

ODD KNOWLEDGE

OCCASIONALLY PRACTISED UPON PUBLIC WORKS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

"Take this letter to my old partner as quickly as you can. Wait for an answer, and come back straight."

"All right, sir."

"Now, my wife, when my old partner arrives, leave the room. I want the coast clear as I am going to talk and have a sort of mutual confession of some tricks and dodges we have played and learned during the last forty years or so to get a bit 'extra' on the quiet; and forty years knocking about with your eyes bound to be on full glare ought to teach one a thing or two, and they have. They have! Yes; and I have been in the swim.

"Stir up the fire, if only to keep things all alike and as hot as possible; and put a couple of glasses handy, and some water and....

"So you've got back. Where is the letter?"

"Have got no letter, sir; but it is all right; your old partner will be round about 7 o'clock and will stay till he is turned out, so he said."

"Oh! I am glad."

"Why, sir, he is knocking now."

"So he is."

"Here I am, old chap, what's the matter?"

"I feel pasty, but am better now you have come. Bring your chair near the fire. Well, I want to talk to you on the quiet very badly. It will do me good, and I am sure it will not be long before the white muslin is spread over me and I'm still in death. You've come to stop?"

"Yes, as long as you like."

"That is good, and I am glad and feel better now you have said it. Before I begin, taste our home-brewed elder. It's all right, for my wife was a cook, but it's a long time ago; and between you and me, my profits don't run to providing her with as large an assortment of materials as she says is necessary to keep her fairly up to art in the cookery department."

"That is very goodthe best I have tasted. Well, what is it, old partner? Shake fins."

"It's to talk over old times, and the tricks and dodges we have played, and known others do, to get 'extra' profit on the different works we have been."

"A kind of confession?"

"That's it. Don't laugh. I can't help it now."

"I understand you. Start the fun, and I will follow."

"We can talk pretty to each other, and lucky the young master is not here, for he would think that we are as bad as old Nick himself; still, we have not done many tricks for some time, and could, perhaps, put him up to a thing or two concerning the execution of work."

"Very likely; but we are all tarred with the same brush; it's only a question of quantity and thickness and what colour the paint is."

"I suppose we are bound to work up an excuse somehow or other; and if I moralize a bit tender at first, by way of a diversion, you won't mind, for it is part of the stock in trade of such rare old sharks as us, and I will cut it as short and tasty as I can.

"I was brought up right, like you; and many a time have had my shoulder patted by the good folks and been told not to think of myself too much, and to remember the feelings of others. In my salad days, you know, I used to think whether or not it was coming it rough on chaps, innocent unborn babes that will have to work in the next century, should the world hold out till then, putting in too strong work, and said to myself, Is it acting kindly towards them? No, I said, it is not treating them right to give them so much trouble to make alterations. I won't call them repairs and additions, nor improvements. I soon humbugged myself into thinking it was not being really benevolent to those who will have to work when we are all lying flat, and I hope quietbut there, of course, such thoughts hardly make one act honestly; however, I have done moralizing now, and perhaps it ill becomes me, and I will have no more of it or it may stop my tongue. Now to business, and I am going to speak pretty freely."

CHAPTER II.

SCREW PILES.

General ConsiderationManipulation for "extra" profit.

"You want to know my experiences with screw piles first."

"Yes."

"They do very well when the water is not deep and the ground loose sand, silty sand, or sandy fine gravel, and nothing else; and I prefer disc piles for sand, provided the water power can be easily obtained.

"The whole area of a screw blade is often taken as bearing support; but I doubt if it should be, for it is not a bared foundationthat is, one you can see and know the character of, as in a cylinder pier, for instance; but some appear to assume it is, and then claim that a lot of metal is saved and the same or more bearing obtained. The screw blade may always be right and it may not be, and no one positively knows; because no one can see whether it is down straight, turned, or broken, but the difference between the actual and the breaking strain comes to the rescue.