THE GLASS INDUSTRY. 439 



the work to him. Once located, he is fairly permanent, and his 

 dexterity is soon reproduced in the band of apprentices who gather 

 around him. 



With our present increasing output, the question of a market 

 is no less important than the technical operations. The product 

 is so fragile and so bulky that the market must needs be fairly 

 accessible. Difficulties of transportation wrecked a number of 

 the earlier enterprises. An observer of the first attempts at glass- 

 making in Virginia reported that the industry would have done 

 very well had there been any market for its wares. 



These are the five elements which in the kaleidoscope of indus- 

 trial progress have given us the series of pictures constituting the 

 history of the glass industry. These pictures are the more intel- 

 ligible when one has studied their elements separately. 



The Jamestown venture in 1608 was evidently undertaken be- 

 cause of the abundance of timber. This gave the necessary supply 

 of potash as well as of fuel. The early colonists in America suf- 

 fered indeed from an embarrassment of riches in the way of forests. 

 They needed no arbor-days. As a consequence, any enterprise 

 which cleared the land for farming, and did it at a profit, com- 

 mended itself to their thrift. So in the colonial records of the 

 seventeenth century we find not infrequent mention of existing or 

 projected glass works. The early Virginia enterprise was fol- 

 lowed, in 1621, by a more extensive attempt. Subscriptions were 

 opened in London for funds to build a second glass-house — the 

 first having fallen into decay — to be devoted to the manufacture 

 of beads for the Indian trade. Italian workmen, probably edu- 

 cated in the famous factories of Murano, were sent over to the 

 colony to take part in the new enterprise. It was, however, 

 brought to a tragic end by the Indian massacres of the following 

 year, when the glass-house was destroyed. The natives seem to 

 have been for the time quite blind to the allurements of glass 

 beads, or they may have thought that they were paying too high 

 a price for them. With this double failure glass-making in 

 Virginia entirely ceased, and was not revived until many years 

 after. 



Meanwhile, Massachusetts was starting her first glass works. 

 These were at Salem, and were built in 1638. In New England 

 the town has ever been an active agent in all affairs concerning 

 the public good. It took a lively and possibly at times a trouble- 

 some interest in these early manufactures. The establishment of 

 glass works at Salem was held to be an event of public importance, 

 and the town voted the projectors several acres of land, which 

 passed into record as the Glass-House Fields. In 1641 it showed 

 its further interest in the enterprise by granting a loan of thirty 

 pounds. The works continued in operation for some time, turn- 



