Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/168

156 in 1775 at Glassboro. They are still in operation, and are at the present day the most extensive of American bottle-works, employing as they do some six hundred persons in the conduct of their operations. It is a significant fact, showing the force of modern progress, that after existing for more than a century, the capacity of the "plant" was increased over fifty per cent during a recent period of three years. It is one of several establishments which have grown up in that neighborhood, and which have been attracted by the same cause, the abundance of a fair quality of sand. There is, moreover, something highly gregarious about modern industries. It frequently happens that many other localities offer quite as favorable conditions as the one selected; but the simple presence of a successful industry seems to turn men's thoughts in that direction, and lead them to undertake similar enterprises rather than to attempt the dangerous experiment of importing a new manufacture. To this principle of gregariousness, as well as to the wide wastes of sand, must the community of glass-workers in southern New Jersey be attributed. Like apparently begets like.



There is little that is attractive about the exterior of such a bottle-factory. One finds it set down in the midst of a flat, monotonous country, and surrounded by indifferent wooden houses with bare, sandy door-yards which bespeak small appreciation of the element of beauty. That these houses are homes, and are for the most part owned by those who live in them, adds immensely to their interest, but it does not conceal the fact that life here is