One Pit of Lime

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, among the lanes behind the brewery where every garden wants a wall and half of them are falling, two bricklayers worked the same parishes, and the whole difference between them was how many gardens each looked at before writing a figure.

Two bricklayers, the same stock bricks and the same slaked lime.
Both built sound garden walls and charged by the rod.
One priced each garden as though it stood on its own.
One offered two gardens a figure neither could have alone.
The bricks cost the same for both men and the mortar the same.
Same trade, same walls, same hands. Which man laid more brick?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two bricklayers in the town I've never named, working the lanes on the low side of it where the ground is soft and old walls lean. The same trade down to the last article: stock bricks fetched from the yard by the canal, a pit dug for the lime, the line and pins, the barrow, and the long afternoon of slaking before a single brick is bedded.

The first man priced honestly. He would walk out to a garden, measure the fallen length, reckon the rods, add the carting and his days, and give a figure nobody had cause to complain of. He built a straight wall and left the garden swept.

The second man did the same for years, until a wet autumn when he found himself counting. Of eleven days on a wall behind the malthouse, two and a half had gone before a brick was laid: carting, digging the pit, slaking, setting up and clearing away at the end. He had always known it and never put a figure against it.

So the next time he stood in a garden with his rule out, he looked over the hedge. The garden along had a wall down too, propped with a post and a bit of gate. He asked who lived there, and went and knocked.

Then he wrote the same words on two sheets and left one at each door. Each wall, built properly, at a figure some way under what either would have been asked alone, on the condition that both went up in the same fortnight, so that one load of bricks and one pit of lime served the pair. If only one went ahead, the ordinary price stood.

He had to persuade nobody. The first householder held the paper and had a reason of his own to go up the lane that evening, and went. He was not recommending a bricklayer. He was proposing a saving, which a man can say over a fence without sounding as though he were put up to it.

Both walls went up in the same fortnight. One pit of lime, one carter paid, one morning of setting up. He took less for each wall and more for the fortnight, and spent nine days of it laying brick rather than six and a half.

Be fair to the first man. His price was right and his walls better than sound. But he had priced the wall and never the day, so he had no saving to divide and nothing a customer could carry next door. You cannot pass a price along a lane. You can pass along an arrangement.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Where a good part of what a job costs you is getting there and setting up rather than the material itself, two jobs standing near each other are worth more than the same two apart, and the cheapest way to find the second is to give the first customer an offer he can only take by fetching his neighbour. You are not buying a recommendation. You are dividing a real cost and handing half the saving to the man who finds you the work.

The first thing to see is that the reduction is not a discount. A discount takes money out of your year and gives nothing back, which is why a reduction with no true reason behind it quietly becomes your new price. This one is arithmetic. The carting, the setting up and the clearing away are spent once and serve twice, so what you hand the customer is part of a cost that has genuinely gone. The same truth tells you why work is only ever cheap while you are already standing there, and most trades apply it to one customer and stop.

The second thing is the messenger. A neighbour who stands to save by your building two walls is a better advocate than one who has merely been pleased. The pleased man must praise you, and praise is weighed and discounted. The saving man need say nothing about your work at all, and his own interest lies plainly on the table. Hidden interest corrupts a recommendation. Open interest does not, since the man hearing it can do the sum and decide on the figure rather than the friendship.

The third thing is that it costs no selling time at all. Most trades hunt the second job with a handbill or a wasted morning, when it stands behind the hedge of the first.

Two cautions. The condition must be real, which means being willing to let both walls go if only one wants it. If you will build the single wall at the lower figure anyway, you have not made an offer, you have published a cheaper price and will never get the old one back. And the terms must be identical for both and plainly so, since the moment one suspects he is paying towards the other's bargain you have made an enemy in a lane you hoped to work for years.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. How much of my last job went before the work began? Separate the travelling, the loading, the setting up and the clearing away from the hours of actual trade. If that share is small, this letter is not for you. If it is a quarter, you have given a quarter away.
2. Which two names in my book are within half a mile of each other? Look in the day book rather than in your memory, which keeps customers by how pleasant they were and not by where they live.
3. Can the offer be said in one breath over a fence? If a customer cannot repeat it without reading it out, he will not repeat it. One figure, one condition, one date.

The Answer to the Riddle

The same bricks, the same lime, one man pricing each garden alone and the other offering two gardens a figure neither could have singly. Which laid more brick?

The second, and not because he was cheaper. He was cheaper by the wall and dearer by the fortnight, which is the only arithmetic that pays a wage. He had found the one cost two customers could share, divided it in the open, and given a householder a reason of his own to walk up the lane and do the asking. The first man waited for each garden to fall in its own time, and paid the whole price of getting there each time one did.

The verse:

The brick costs what it costs and the lime is lime for all,
But the morning spent in getting there is spent the once or twice.
So set two jobs in one short lane and let the day be shared,
And he who saves by it will knock on doors you never could.

Until next time. Go and look down your own list of enquiries for two that sit within half a mile of each other, and write the same offer to both before the week is out.

P.S. There is a second gift in it, nothing to do with neighbours. You cannot divide a cost you have never separated, so making the offer once obliges you to learn what a day of your own attendance comes to. Most trades never learn it, and price every solitary job as though getting there were free.

Also in the archive: Twopence and Half a Mile, Your Sister on the Lane and The Baker's Thirteenth Loaf.