Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/606

 586 and build up the largest communities in the shortest time. The means employed were eminently socialistic. The business of town "booming" was intrusted to the town corporation itself, instead of being left to private effort. The town undertook the work of exploration, drilling the wells, and finally of supplying free gas to all manufacturing concerns which would settle within the town limits. Tiffin has been particularly active in these corporate ventures. In about one year it spent two hundred thousand dollars in the work of development, and, besides the pledge of free gas, furnished fifty thousand dollars to secure a large glass factory. It was a somewhat daring policy, but it succeeded so well that other towns soon followed its example. Where they had no money to give, they gave free gas and ten-acre lots. Thus solicited, the glass industry became a willing immigrant and invaded the State in generous proportions. This phase forms indeed a curious chapter in our industrial history, and is a strong contrast to the mortal struggles of our earlier glass-makers.

The industry had a very similar history in Indiana, though on a less extended scale and at a somewhat later period. The State was early identified with the plate-glass manufacture, but it was not until the development of natural gas that it took a prominent place. The whole southeastern part of Indiana is underlaid by the Trenton limestone, and is a highly productive gas territory. Its history begins with the drilling of the Kokomo well in the fall of 1886. This gave a daily output of two million cubic feet, and was soon followed by others yielding six and seven million feet. Throughout the entire State the work of exploration proceeded with astonishing rapidity. Few districts, indeed, have been so thoroughly exploited. It is now one of the three chief gas-producing areas in the United States, and has attracted a proportionate number of glass factories.

Certain branches of the industry, such as the manufacture of plate glass, can hardly be said to belong to any State, for it has shown itself decidedly peripatetic. The first attempts were probably those made at Cheshire, Mass., in 1852-'5. After an unprofitable run of six months, the works were removed to Brooklyn, N. Y. Here there was more experimenting and more loss. The enterprise was abandoned in 1856. This same year a second attempt was made at Lenox, Mass. After some initial difficulties and failures the works got successfully under way and continued to manufacture rough plate until the close of the war. A new company was then formed and undertook the production of polished plate. A machine which had been invented to grind and polish marble was found to do equally good work on glass, and was put into operation with excellent results. In a modified form it is still employed, both in this country and in Europe. The