Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/180

168 working year an expenditure for pots alone of ten thousand dollars. The present tank furnaces are out of blast during July and August, but the year's repairs are only a nominal expense. The hot season is chosen for renovation for very obvious reasons, though the heat alone is not sufficiently intense to make the cessation of work a necessity.

In thus following the evolutionary process by which a glass bottle is produced, one meets with many ingenious contrivances and many shrewd adaptations of means to ends, but he will scarcely meet with any problem of quite such deep interest as that presented by the people who carry out this process. Particularly is one struck with the large number of boys, scarcely more than children, who are employed in such a factory. About the furnace proper there are even more boys than men. The law does not permit the employment of children under twelve years of age, but exceptions are sometimes allowed by the labor inspector in case a boy has a widowed mother, or some other particular demand upon his early activity. New Jersey further attempts to protect her children by making an annual school attendance of five months compulsory for them. In the glass-blowing districts this requirement is met by the establishment of night schools supported by the State. The term lasts only for the allotted five months, the daily session being for two hours, from half-past six to half-past eight o'clock. My own limited observation of the working of night schools has led me to believe that they are but poor substitutes for work done earlier in the day when the boys are fresher and more buoyant; but the superintendent of a large factory, to whom I spoke on the subject, was of the opinion that these childish glass-workers are doing very satisfactory work in such schools. It is hard, nevertheless, that childhood should be made so short, and that the work-a-day life should begin so early for these little people. They seem, it is true, a very happy, merry set of youngsters, and, if one may judge from the tricks they are constantly playing on one another, they manage to get a fair share of boyish fun; but they can not fail to lose much in being so soon harnessed. As a class, these lads seemed to be finer looking and in many ways better conditioned than the older workers, so that one would naturally fancy that the hard work was leaving its landmarks. Men who have known them longer tell me, however, that it is a new generation, and one that has been reared under more favorable conditions of life.

They are comparatively well paid. The little boys make three dollars a week, and the larger ones six; modest sums admittedly; but large enough under the circumstances of country life to permit a little laying by. I felt curious to know what aspirations were most favored in such a community, and to what ideals the