THE GLASS INDUSTRY. 597 



stretching westward from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, for the 

 eminently utilitarian quality of its products. 



But the most important thing in regard to the development of 

 glass-making in America remains yet to be said. It is the tend- 

 ency which the industry discloses in this year of grace 1893, four 

 centuries after the discovery of the country. The events briefly 

 outlined in the foregoing pages have given the industry a certain 

 heredity, if one may so express it, a certain projectile force which 

 tends to carry it along easily distinguishable lines of develop- 

 ment. Acting with this in point of time, and occasionally against 

 it in the matter of direction, there is an equally definite industrial 

 environment in the midst of which this force is to operate. One 

 is made aware of these dual factors by a comparative study of the 

 census reports. But industrial history is made so rapidly at the 

 present time that, if one is to speak of the tendency of to-day, it 

 must be in the light of strictly contemporary events. The im- 

 portance of the glass industry has warranted the establishment 

 and maintenance of a number of very admirable trade journals, 

 and it is in the columns of these journals that one is able to dis- 

 cern the signs of the times. 



There is an unmistakable tendency toward the substitution of 

 machine for hand processes. It suits the American temper better 

 to exercise itself over the invention of a machine, or over the im- 

 provement of one already invented, than it does to plod along in 

 the exercise of a routine dexterity. So we find the most rapid 

 growth and the greatest relative perfection in those departments 

 the most dependent upon mechanical processes, such as the manu- 

 facture of the pressed ware, of bottles, and of plate glass. Not 

 less marked is the tendency to supplant the reservoir system of 

 melting in pots by the continuous system represented by tank 

 furnaces. In one department, that of bottle-making, this substi- 

 tution, as we have already seen, has been in large measure carried 

 out, and in other departments it seems indeed only a question of 

 time as to when it will be realized. Similarly in the matter of fuel, 

 the continuous supply of gas is rapidly taking the place of the 

 less convenient and less continuous solid fuel. But the centraliz- 

 ing force of natural gas is beginning to lose its power. It is being 

 practically demonstrated that manufactured gas and petroleum 

 are able to economically compete with the natural product. Even 

 within the natural-gas territory, shortage of supply and other 

 irregularities have led several glass-makers to turn for their 

 gaseous fuel to manufactories more contemporary than the Devo- 

 nian gas rock. At Beaver Falls, Pa., for instance, the Co-opera- 

 tive Glass Company was threatened with disaster by the fail- 

 ure of its gas supply. But it turned at once to gas-producers 

 and improved melting furnaces, with results which were highly 



