Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/170

158 reducible and useful metal, it is naturally considerably more expensive than the earthy ingredients, but its cost is still far within the limits of moderation. The Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi Valley furnish lead ores in such abundance that the compounds of the metal may fairly be classed among cheap products. The total cost of the "batch" can not be more than a few cents a pound. Compare this with the value of the finished products. The finer cut glass will sell for perhaps as many dollars a pound, while the finest cameo glass may bring almost as many hundred, It must not be supposed, however, that the difference, or even the



greater part of it, goes into the pocket of the manufacturer. A fair proportion reaches that destination, but by far the larger share goes for meat and bread and coal, houses and cloth, to sustain the life of the army of men, women, and children by whose labor these dull earths and oxides are transformed into the brilliant carafes and bowls which adorn our dinner-tables.

Much the greater part of this increased value is conferred upon the glass by the dexterous hand-work expended in the atelier, rather than by the coarser operations which attend the furnace process. This, however, is the basis of all that follows, and the beginnings of the finest cut-glass bowl or cameo vase are to be sought in the mixing-room, where the crude materials are put together. In different establishments the proportions vary, as in the manufacture of all other forms of glass products, and even in the same establishment uniformity is far from absolute.