434 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



glassware was equally limited. Yet it was only a hundred and 

 sixteen years after the discovery of America that the first glass 

 works were established in the colonies. It was a modest venture 

 in an industrial way, but one to which much importance is 

 attached, since it was the starting point in that interesting history 

 which it is the purpose of the present paper to outline ; and still 

 more, because it was the first industry started by Europeans on 

 American soil. It thus heads a list which is to-day certainly as 

 long as human needs and almost as long as human desires. It is 

 a list which has been nearly three hundred years in the making. 



This was in the year 1608. The pioneer glass-house was a part 

 of the activities at Jamestown. The spirit of the London Com- 

 pany was distinctly commercial. It had gold and silver in mind 

 as the ultimate goal, but, with a prudence characteristic of British 

 enterprise, it had also an eye to nearer and smaller profits. The 

 plan of colonial manufacture was meant to serve this end. On 

 the second voyage of Captain Newport, eight Poles and Germans 

 were sent over for the express purpose of making glass, pitch, tar, 

 and soap- ashes. The glass-house was out in the woods, about a 

 mile from Jamestown. It was a crude affair, but it seems to have 

 been the center of considerable activity, for when the ship re- 

 turned to England in the following year, "a trial of glass" was 

 among her cargo. The glass was presumably exported in the 

 form of common black bottles, for the state of the art in those 

 days, and the limited time, would scarcely have allowed the evo- 

 lution of anything more difficult of manufacture. 



The progress of the glass industry in America has been far 

 from constant. It has suffered severe and violent fluctuations, 

 amounting almost to annihilation. Several times it has needed 

 to be born again. But the sum total of these successes and vi- 

 cissitudes has been the establishment of an industry which, while 

 it is the oldest, is also at the present time one of the most prom- 

 ising and most highly developed of all our industries. To under- 

 stand its rise and progress, one must be familiar with the elements 

 which go to make it up. 



Four things are needed to make glass: crude materials; re- 

 fractory substances for crucibles and furnaces ; suitable fuel, and 

 intelligent labor. To make glass commercially, a fifth factor is 

 all important, and that is an accessible market. 



The history of the industry has consisted in the various pos- 

 sible interchanges between these elements. They are far from 

 permanent. The causes which led to the early establishment of 

 the Jamestown glass-house were good and valid for the year 

 1608, although a somewhat pessimistic writer declared the energy 

 misdirected, but they would not hold in the year 1893. The com- 

 pelling force which gathers our present glass-houses to such 



