Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1888-10-05
THE BRICKLAYER'S TRADE.
THE OLDEST CALLING IN THE HIS
TORY OF CIVILIZATION
Facts Which Prove the Antiquity of
This Handicraft-Slave Brick-
LAYERS of Ancient Babylon


trade in the world, it is certainly the
next to the oldest. There must have
been brick-makers before there were
brick-layers, but with this one exception
the calling is perhaps the oldest In the
history of civilization.
The tower of Babel was built with
brick like that used in America to-day.
The third verse of the eleventh chapter
of Genesis says:
'And each one said to his neighbor,
Come let us make brick and bake them
with fire, and they had brick instead of
stones and slime instead of mortar"
Even the record of Genesis, however,
harkly gives an idea of the great anti
guilty of this vocation. 1t appears that
the builders of Babylon used brick al
together rather than stones. There are
still to be found in various places very
curious accounts Of the Babylonian brick
LAYING and the manner IN which the
workmen were paid The walls of Baby
lon town were raised chiefly by slaves
who received no wages, but who were
fed, housed, and clothed at rate OF pay
equal to about half the value of bushel
of wheat, which would mean some
thing over forty cents day,
or about what the modern brick
layer gets for one hours work. The
slaves of Babylon were worked from sun
rise to sunset, and their Overseers were
provided with lashes to keep the I'M
fortunates up to their task. 1t seems,
however, that brick-layers soon came to
be recognized rather as artists than
artisans, and into their hands was COM
mitted the history of the country. The
bricks of the Persian Empire, cemented
like those of Genesis with slime, contain
upon their surfaces inscriptions which
modern ingenuity has unraveled, and
which tell the story of the Perian kings.
In the records the brick-layers have
not forgotten themselves, and accord
ingly there has been left for modern
times a clear idea of how these men
worked. They understood the scaffOld
and the trowel, as the pictures on the
buried walls still show They knew how
to keep line of bricks plumb and
horizontal. They had a square-not
like the one used in the nineteenth
century, but still one which a nineteeth
century brick-Iayer could use. Indeed,
the cuts given in the books of the archie
ologists show that a Chicago brick
layer could have put up the walls of
Thebes, or that a Persian workman
would have been able to make a good
showing in a Chicago house, using the
utensils and materials of the trade then
and now.
In Egypt the Bible again has much to
say about brick-laying and brick
making The bricks without straw
that the children of Israel had to make
90 to show one of the first labor dis
putes in history. The Egyptian brick
was not baked with ire. It was left
in the sunlight until 1t was thoroughly
hardened, and was then set up in the
wall with mud,g and not with mortar.
AS a consequence the brick buildings of
Egypt have persisted and only the stone
monuments of the people have survived,
but history shows that the palaces of the
Pharaohs were largely of brick. These,
too, were decorated as highly as the
artists knew how to accomplish the work,
and basso-relievOs or sun dried clay car
ried upon their surfaces the stories of
Egyptian progress.
The Egyptians taught brick laying,
along with the other arts of civilization,
to the Greeks, and Athens, Sparta. and
the towns of the peninsula carried the
work to high degree Of excellence.
The Greeks used three kinds Of brick,
or rather three sizes, the dedoron, tetra-
don, and pentadOn, which were combined
in the same building. From Greece
brick-laying travelled to Rome, and there
are Dr1Ck houses now standing IN the
Eternal City which are more than 100
years old. In the time of the empire
brick-layers were paid wages which, tax
ing into consideration the difference in
value between American money and Ro-
man, amounted to about 81 day. The
hours of work were from dawn to dark,
and the men were allowed about an hour
and half off during the day and a rea
sonable amount of wine. OF course these
wages were not often paid to the men
themselves, bat to their owners, for the
workingmen in Rome were still practi-
cally enslaved at that period.
From the Mediterranean countries
brick-laying spread westward. John of
Spoleto built brick house in Cologne as
early as the year 300, and he had to make
his own kiln to burn his bricks. In Paris
there are still brick walls standing which
were erected as early as A. D. 100 and
this early work compares favorably with
that done since. The old rick-makers
used good deal of lime in their bricks
and the result has been material which
seems to be practically imperishable
Of course brick-laying was wrought to
a higher degree of excellence in the
Netherlands than in any other country.
The Dutch used brick for everything,
street paving and house furniture and
bake ovens among other things, and the
brick pavements in so many Amerioan