Piece Work and Jerry Building.
The root of the claim that the houses built by the speculative builder were jerry-built arose from the speed at which they were erected. Using the piece-work system it was just possible for a house suitable for sale to the working classes to be erected in two days, leaving a further four days for the finishing trades. This speed of erection using traditional methods made it difficult for manufacturers of pre-fabricated systems to convince the industry that they were superior to existing methods. As has been shown the craftsmen and trades unions were generally against such methods. The Tudor Walters Report echoed their views that 'such a system offered a temptation to the inferior workman to give an insufficient amount of care and attention to the details and quality of his work'(44). Workmen who consistently gave poor work would not have been employed by the speculative builder, for it is very easy to distinguish competent workmen from those without sufficient skills for the job. The report also stated that 'So long as any form of payment by result is resisted by representatives of labour, we are convinced that improvement of production must depend upon...regularising employment' (45). Several suggestions were made in the Report as to ways of making organised labour feel more comfortable with payments by results but none of the suggestions was workable. The underlying difficulty and the major problem facing all building workers was the casual nature of the work and the lack of permanent employment. The established labour view as expressed in the Report that 'regular employment would tend to secure increased output' was unrealistic. However, in the summary of the Report it was recommended that 'The work should be carried out generally on lump sum contract,' which is essentially what the speculative developer of the house for the working classes did (47).
The lack of building experience and the dearth of craftsmen among the contractors and sub-contractors at the time is to be expected in an industry which had grown so quickly. Jackson suggests that inexperienced 'builders, labourers, milkmen, estate agents clerks, Liverpool iron merchants and gown manufacturers' were on record as having built houses during the London building boom (48). The New Survey of London recorded that 'assistants or labourers were usually employed at time rates. The craftsman would profit by paying himself out of the difference...and in speculative housing it would appear that it produces astonishing reductions of cost'(49). The Survey went on to say that;
"the method is very widely used in the outskirts of London. A housing scheme in Middlesex was recently put up entirely by piece-work. This was exceptional but it is usual to find up to sixty per cent of speculative building carried out by piece work. Interior wood-work was priced at £33 per house when it had been £90 per unit before. The trades unions are against such workings but good workmen prefer it as it yields a better wage" (50).
Developers were able to offer work on a piece-work basis to anyone they could find to do the work. The sub-contractors or piece-workers 'is a separate entrepreneur, there is an increased distribution of risk and responsibility for the storage of materials, capital investment and labour management. The large general contractor of today merely takes on the function of general organiser for the entire project' (51).
The change in the manner in which the speculative builder responded to the increased pace of activity and labour shortages is illustrated by the experiences of Taylor Woodrow. For the first two years of the development of their first large-scale estate at Grange Park in Hayes Middlesex they used their own labour, after that time the houses were built 'using 100% piece work labour' (52). Examples of the rates they were prepared to pay were given to the author by Sir Frank Taylor. Twelve pounds for the entire plumbing labour including all roof flashings, gutters, rain-water goods and all interior plumbing and fitting of sanitary goods, 7/6 to 8/6 per house was paid to hang all doors both external and internally and 35/- to 40/- to tile a house. There were rates for all jobs based on the length of time the builder thought the job would take and the number of houses to be dealt with (53). There are no references to piece-work rates paid in copies of The Builder during the period in question. This is because the rates were subject to local conditions and determined by the general foreman who would be working within a budget for the site in question. The Builder did offer a schedule of wage rates and a limited number of rates for jobs. For example, the rates per square yard for plaster and painting are shown. From this it would have been possible for a speculative contractor to work out the approximate price for the job which would then be offered to sub-contractors on a piece-work basis. Building costs are shown in The Economist, which published an index of building costs as a combination of (i) an index of wage rates based on a simple average of rates in London and Manchester which include those of bricklayers, plasterers, slaters, most other skilled workers and labourers, and (ii) an index of costs of materials based on the simple average of London quotations for stone, brick, paint.
These indices were not perfect, as they would have been based on prices in the two major capitals and for larger jobs such as the building of major office buildings or capital projects for the government. The rates of pay offered for overtime, weekend working or payments made on a piece-work basis were seldom recorded.
There were no advertisements in either The Builder or The Illustrated Carpenter and Builder during the 1930s offering work at specified prices. The prospective piece-work contractors would go to the sites to see what was being offered or telephone the general foreman, if a telephone had been installed in the site office (54). The records of the London County Council as they relate to the development of the Becontree estate do not contain any specific references to piece-work rates. The records for the Central Avenue Estate in Hayes Middlesex, which comprised twenty- three hundred houses built in the late 1920s did not record the payments to builders on a piece-work basis. It is not surprising that such records are unavailable now, as when writing in The Economic Journal in 1939 J. Richardson noted that 'statistics of actual money earnings, which are rarely available, show wider fluctuations than money rates' (55). Whether or not the piece-work system was employed by the builders of municipal housing, is not known. Most of these estates were constructed using direct labour, it was certainly employed as often as possible by the speculative builders. For the speculative builder the completion of a development and the sale of all the houses meant that he could reduce his staff to just a few people while he looked for another parcel of land to develop.
As a result of the manner in which the houses were built, largely using workers on a piece-work basis, there was a feeling that a considerable amount of what was called jerry building and jerry designing went on. The inter-war builders did build large numbers of houses in a limited time where rivalry among builders to produce the cheapest house resulted in them using 'cheap materials and mean dimensions and to rely on insufficiently skilled labour' (56). There is a comparison between the methods of say, Ford and Bentley in manufacturing motor cars. The lower paid could not have afforded a Bentley, but were very happy with a Ford car which was more suited to their purpose and pocket.
Within the industry during the 1930s letters and articles in the trade press discussed the problem of jerry building, and no one denied its existence. Those builders who wrote to the journals said that the problem was caused by other builders. Almost every edition of the Building Societies Gazette (BSG) in the 1930s had a column called "Notes on House building and Design by Surveyor", and articles on jerry building were not uncommon. This series of articles would have been useful for the building society industry as there were about thirteen hundred societies at that time and only the top two or three would have had a surveyor's department (57). An exchange of correspondence about jerry building in the Illustrated Builder and Carpenter of January 1936 complains of 'The so called estate developers employing labourers who are carrying out the work of tradesmen without serving any form of apprenticeship' as being the root cause of the problem (58). A letter in the Daily Chronicle said 'If it were compulsory for every builder to insert a stone in the front of each house giving his name...the good builders would not object...and the jerry builders would be starved out of business' (59). The 1939 Building Societies Act would have been an appropriate vehicle in which measures could have been introduced make the building societies warrant the condition of any new house. However no agreement was reached between the builders, the societies and the government on this matter and the issue was fudged.
The London clay on which a large number of the speculative houses were built 'attacked concrete prepared from conventional mixes...and cracking of walls followed after long periods of dry weather'(60). After experiencing problems, John W. Laing realised that the 'unfamiliar London clay[Laing was from Carlisle] had brought him special problems and he took no risks' (61). It is likely that the majority of the smaller builders did not take such care with the houses they built.
Building standards are at best a matter of opinion and the subject of local practice. What may be judged acceptable in one part of England could well be unsuitable elsewhere where soil, wind or rain conditions make other methods of building more appropriate. Local custom also had to be taken into account. Differing byelaws in 'adjacent districts can lead to situations where in one district bricks can only be used if "well burnt" and an adjoining district will not accept cement or sand-lime bricks because they have not been "well burnt" (62)'.
Specifications of works for building contracts always contain phrases, such as 'well made', 'suitable', 'where necessary' - and other such inexactitudes. Where there is an architect to supervise the works control can be exercise and standards enforced. In the speculatively built house the final arbitrator was the purchaser and he would have lacked the expertise to challenge the developer. It is a matter of opinion what the phrases 'best works' and 'architects best' mean, perhaps best suited for the purpose - and this need not be the same as 'best quality' (63). In an industry which was as traditional as the building industry was in the 1930s, new methods of constructions and new materials were not readily taken to by the more established craftsmen. But materials had improved owing to their being made in factories or under more scientific conditions. The cement used in the 1930s was of a higher standard than that used in the period before 1914, and so therefore mixes of 12 to 1 were quite adequate for foundations rather than the 6 to 1 ratio that had commonly been used. A cement manufacturer 'stated that the foundations for the factory were made from a 15 to 1 mix and the crushing strength was 2,800 after 90 days' (64). The use of such a lean mix could have been regarded as an example of jerry building.
It is therefore difficult to determine just what is meant by jerry building. In The Builder a letter from a reader said that so long as the public will accept a house at a price below which good building and design can reasonably expect it to be obtained, the house will be shoddy in most respects (65).
The speculative builder was generally able to provide good, soundly built homes of a size and design which were available at a cost which many working-class people could afford; these houses have stood the test of time.
(44) para 342.
(45) para 343.
(46) para 342.
(47) part XI, para 157.
(48) A. Jackson, Semi-Detached London, (London, 1991), p. 65.
(49) The New Survey of London Life and Labour, (London, 1931), p. 16.
(50) ibid., 75.
(51) H. Robinson, The Economic of Building (London, 1939), p. 15.
(52) Interview with Frank Taylor on 21 September 1994.
(53) The prices were obtained from interviews with Frank Taylor on 21 September 1994 and Alf Hood in December 1993, a carpenter who worked on the Wonder Houses. Also with Bob Herbert a plumber in September 1993 who had worked on the Taylor Woodrow estates and for other developers in West London during the 1930s.
(54) From discussions in September 1994 between the writer and R. Herbert, a plumbing contractor who carried out a great deal of sub-contracting work on a piece-work basis before 1939.
(55) The Economic Journal,, vol 49, (1939), p 426.
(56) J.Richards, Castles on the Ground, (London, 1973), p. 86.
(57) There were 1,271 societies in 1920 and 952 in 1940. From the annual returns submitted to the Registrar of Friendly Societies.
(58) Illustrated Carpenter and Builder (10 January 1936), p. 114.
(59) News Chronicle (7 June 1935).
(60) A. Jackson, Semi-Detached London (London, 1991), p. 108.
(61) R. Coad, Laing (London, 1979), p. 105.
(62) The Builder, (22 February 1935), p. 32.
(63) ibid., p.79.
(64) Illustrated Carpenter and Builder, (8 March 1935), p. 534.
(65) The Builder (January 1936), p. 28. |
