In the middle of the
room was a large round furnace containing a number of small doors not
quite four feet from the ground, and a glass-blower was stationed before
each of these. With long iron blowpipes these men, by giving the
blowpipe a little twirl as they thrust it into the semi-molten metal,
drew out on the end of it a small mass of glass, of about the
consistency of nearly melted sealing wax, and holding this mass on the
end of the blowpipe by keeping it in motion, they blew it into balls and
rolled the ball of soft, red-hot glass on their rolling boards. Then
they lifted the blowpipe and blew again, sharp and hard, forcing the
soft glass to its proper form. The now cooling glass was broken from the
end of the blowpipe with a sharp, snapping sound, and the blowpipe was
plunged in the furnace again for another bottle. The whole had taken
but a few seconds.
"Why do they have so many boys around these places?" queried Hamilton of
the workman he had been watching.
"Have to, they say," the glass-blower replied, "cheap bottles mean cheap
labor. No one ever expects to pay anything for a bottle--that is thrown
in with everything liquid you buy.
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