Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/181

Rh boys looked up. The story was soon told: to become glass-blowers, and to have plenty to eat that was all; a life centered about bottles. Yet, among so many bright-faced lads, there are doubtless many of considerable promise, could their imaginations only be fired by some well-directed effort. Some one with a passion for culture and a big human heart could do great things, it seemed to me, with such quick, observant material.

With the older workers the dice have been cast, and life is well crystallized. It has left them divided into two classes: the green-glass blowers, who are chiefly Americans, and the flint-glass blowers, who are more largely Germans. Both bodies of men are closely organized, and as a result make excellent wages. The union to which they belong will not permit more than two apprentices a year to a single furnace. Such a regulation, with the annual increase of the industry and the inevitable deaths, practically excludes competition. The blowers make on an average five dollars a day. In rare cases as much as three hundred dollars a month has been paid to a single man. So large returns, however, are only possible for blowers and gaffers. The other members of the shop, as well as the numerous helpers employed in the conduct of such large enterprises, receive regular wages.

One other feature deserves mention. Throughout the entire works there is observable that marked tendency of modern industrial life to substitute continuous, automatic processes for those which are periodic and manual. The continuous annealing leer is taking the place of the oven; the steady flow of gaseous fuel is replacing the oft-repeated shovelful of coal; the continuous melting tank has been substituted for the discontinuous reservoir system represented by the crucible pots; the uninterrupted automatic charging of the furnace is about to do away with the manual feeding of the batch every three hours; and similarly, in all departments, the change is in progress. The operations of blowing have not yet been made automatic. Bottles but an inch long are still produced by the blower's breath, and little boys dispose of them one by one. But it is not improbable, in spite of the difficulties in the way, that a patent bottle-blowing machine will some day take the place of the army of workers who now swarm around the gathering chamber of a glass-furnace. Such a machine already exists in the brain of a man. When it is materialized into a working fact, the last step in perfecting the evolution of a glass bottle will have been taken, and any further development will be along lines already laid down.