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glass-making is an unhealthy occupation. It may have been thus in former
times; but, as a matter of fact, no mechanical employment is more healthy.
Dissipated as glass-makers have become in former days, and careless of their
health as they are at present, no better evidence can be adduced to prove
the generally healthy character of the employment than the fact that
the Glass Manufacturing Company in Sandwich, averaging in their employment
three hundred hands, had not a man sick through the influence of the
employment, or one die in their connection, for the space of twenty years.|
Drawing No. 2¹ represents the plan adopted in
the French flint-glass furnaces. These at one period were worked by
noblemen only,-- the labor of the furnace-tender and taker-in being
performed by servants, as before stated. The apparel and general style
of dress, as indicated by the drawing, shows that more attention was paid
to the fashion of the day than to comfort. The form of the furnace being
similar to the Venetian shows it to have been subject to the same
unnecessary waste of fuel; but it would appear that the French manufacturers
had taken one step towards improvement, in using the waste fuel of the
furnace to anneal their glass.
¹ See drawing No. 2, at end of book.