Four Pounds Ten in April

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, a builder went to the wall in a wet April, and two plasterers on the same hill each lost four pounds ten by it.

Two plasterers in the town I have never named, the same slaked lime and the same ox hair.
Both were cheated of four pounds ten in the same April, by the same builder, on the same four houses.
One wrote a rule that evening and read it at every door he knocked on after.
One wrote the date, the name and the amount in his day book, and went on as before.
Neither of them was ever cheated by that builder again.
Same lime, same loss, same pair of hands. Which of them had the better year?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Both men were good plasterers. Either could lay a setting coat so fine you could not find the trowel marks with your hand, and both slaked their own lime and let it sit a twelvemonth, which is why their ceilings stayed up. Both had the same sort of trade: householders mostly, with now and then a new building to coat throughout.

That February a builder took a contract for four houses on the hill and set both men on, two houses apiece. They rendered, floated and set through a cold spring, were promised the whole sum at the finish, as was that builder's custom, and in the April he failed. Four pounds ten each, a quarter's living then, gone with a man who had left the county by Whitsun.

The first plasterer went home and did what any sensible man might do. That night he wrote out his conditions: half the money down before a lath was riven, the rest on the day of finishing, and a page of particulars read at every door from Midsummer on. The rule was not foolish, but he took it to the wrong house. The widow on Cross Street, who had used him twenty years and never owed any man a shilling, was asked for two pounds before the trestles went up. She paid it, and she did not ask him again. The small work went first, since no householder will sign a page of particulars over two pounds of work, and within the year his trade was all large jobs with long waits between. He was never cheated again, said so often, and counted it a sound rule all his life.

The second plasterer took out the day book he kept for his own figures and wrote the date, the builder's name, four pounds ten, and under it the circumstance in a line: new work, under a builder, the whole sum at the finish. Then he carried on as before, and watched. In the two years following it happened a second time, the same shape as the first. A builder, new work, money all at the end. No householder failed him of a penny.

So in the third year he made a rule the exact size of the fault. On a builder's work, money in thirds at named stages, the last third before the setting coat went on, a man being readier to find money for a wall not yet finished than for one that is. On the householder, nothing changed, and the mended ceilings went on bringing him the three rooms in September. His rule being a custom of his trade rather than a wound he had taken, he could name it at a builder's table with no heat in it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The rule you write the week you were cheated is paid for by every honest customer who comes after. The loss that prompted it has a name, a date and an amount, and sits in your ledger in ink. The cost of the rule has no name and no amount, being an enquiry that goes quiet, a widow who asks somebody else. One is counted, the other is not, and so the man who makes a bad rule can never find it out. He counts his bad debts at nil and calls the rule a success, as the first plasterer did for thirty years.

Underneath this lies a plainer fault in reasoning. One bad job teaches you the shape of a risk, that such a thing can happen and by what means, and nothing whatever about the rate. Worse, in the week it happens you cannot say which part of the story was the cause. Was it builders, or lump sums, or that particular man, or the size of the job? Unable to separate them, you make the rule wide enough to cover all four, and so apply it to the three that were innocent. A second instance shows you which part repeated, which is the use of writing the thing down on the day, as I have argued elsewhere about what counting your own week puts right. Memory keeps the feeling and loses the circumstance, and it is the circumstance that makes the rule.

So price a rule before you adopt it. Name who it turns away and what it does to the smallest job you take. If you cannot name that cost, you are not weighing two things, you are soothing yourself.

Two cautions. The first is that some faults must be answered at once, and waiting for a second is not patience but negligence. Where one occurrence can take the business from you or hurt somebody, you fix it the same day, and I have written before on spending your caution where the decision cannot be walked back. The counting is for faults that cost money you can bear. The second caution runs the other way. The commoner failing in a small trade is the same fault swallowed for eleven years and called the way of the trade. If a line appears three times in your book, the rule is overdue.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Which of my rules can I name the job that caused it? Go through your terms and conditions and put a date against each. A rule whose fault has not recurred in years is a monument to a dead grudge, and you pay its upkeep weekly.
2. What does that rule cost me in a month? Count the enquiries that stop at it. That nobody has told you they went elsewhere over a condition of yours is no evidence it costs nothing.
3. Which fault have I been absorbing without a rule? The last invoice nobody pays, the job that always runs two days over. Write the dates. If there are three, make the rule this week, the size of the fault and no larger.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same lime, same loss, same pair of hands. Which of them had the better year?

The second plasterer, and every year after. He lost his four pounds ten and then lost nothing else: not the widow on Cross Street, not the mended ceilings, not the three rooms in September they brought him. The first man bought perfect safety from a thing that had happened once, and paid for it with the smallest and friendliest half of his trade, every week, for the rest of his working life.

The verse:

The builder on the hill went down and took four pounds ten,
And both men swore that April it should never come again.
One wrote his rule on every door, on honest women and men,
One wrote the date, and watched, and knew the shape of it by then.

Until next time. Go and find the strictest rule in your terms, name the job it was written after, and look up the date.

P.S. The second plasterer's first change was not a rule about customers at all. It was a rule about himself: that a fault gets written down on the day it happens, with the date, the amount and the circumstance. Keep that one and within a twelvemonth it will tell you which of the others deserve to exist. Keep none, and you govern your trade by whichever misfortune is freshest in your mind.

Also in the archive: The Deposit, The Innkeeper's Rule and Twelve Men and Two.