598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



satisfactory". What can be done at one place, however, can be 

 done at another. Such cases as these serve to loosen the bond 

 which has heretofore made a geographical and geological unit of 

 the gas-blower's calling. Already this disintegrating force is at 

 work, and there is plainly visible a scattering of glass works. In 

 New England old enterprises are slowly reviving. New plants 

 are being built and projected in New Jersey. In the new South 

 there is much activity. Large works are established in Virginia, 

 at Roanoke and Buena Vista, while others are talked of for 

 Buchanan. A substantial project has taken form at Denver. The 

 Board of Trade Reports of the enterprising cities of the new State 

 of Washington mention glass sand among their natural resources, 

 and look to the speedy establishment of glass-houses in their 

 midst. On all sides is to be seen this derealization of the indus- 

 try. For such a large country this seems indeed more like the 

 static condition of affairs, since much of the glass product is too 

 fragile and too bulky for ready transportation. Another most 

 important tendency has been at work for some years past in the 

 matter of labor organization among the glass-blowers, and is per- 

 haps more potent now than ever. In such concentrated centers of 

 the glass manufacture as Pittsburg the solidarity of labor is 

 doing much to place the economic advantage in the hands of less 

 compact and less affiliated bodies of workers in the outlying dis- 

 tricts. Where labor is well organized and so perpetually on the 

 defensive as at Pittsburg the most stringent regulations are 

 forced upon manufacturers in regard to the number of appren- 

 tices who shall work at each furnace and attend each master 

 blower. In consequence of this jealous watchfulness, much work 

 which could as well be done by unskilled and less expensive labor 

 must be reserved for those who are duly accredited by the unions 

 and who receive schedule pay. In other districts where Nature 

 has been less kind and trade-unionism less powerful, it is possible 

 to make some of the commoner forms of glassware, such as bot- 

 tles particularly, at a lower cost than in the more highly favored 

 districts, for the simple reason that the manufacturers are at lib- 

 erty to employ whom they will, and let unskilled labor do the 

 work proper to it. This is a factor not to be lightly considered, 

 for it is to-day sending business into the hands of out-of-the-way 

 glass-houses, and it promises in the future to be very powerful in 

 determining the course of the industry. It is a vexed question, 

 but, if one is to judge from past industrial history, the victory 

 will not be in favor of solidarity. The desire to hamper and re- 

 strict the growth of an industry by saying who shall and who 

 shall not participate in it, is a remnant of the old mediaeval guild 

 spirit which is not in harmony with the modern way of thinking. 

 It is much as if farmers attempted to dictate who should and who 



