House of Brilliant Glass

The following article was printed in The Stevens Point Journal in Stevens Point, WI on Saturday, October 27, 1892 (Vol. XXIV – No.15). Per Jane Spillman, John Hoare died in June of 1896.

This article was sent to us by ACGA member Karen Rasori. We thank Karen for sharing the information.

DOROTHY’S GOBLETS

She Makes Some Investigations of American Manufactures
American Cut Glass – Its History and Value
Now It Compares with That of Other Countries
Wages Much Higher Here, Qualities Better and Prices Less

Yesterday morning Dorothy came flying in before breakfast. I was up to my elbows in angel cake flour, sifting it for the third time, but she flung one arm around my waist and with the other dangled a bank note with numbers ten on it before my face. "Listen, or I'll never let my breakfast cool off again to talk with you," she exclaimed.

“What I want of you is to make yourself presentable and come to town with me. That real china you gave me has gone to my head, and I won't have any but real things in my home, be they ever so simple," hummed she.

“It’s to be cut glass – tumblers, a dozen. Father has told me the name of a dealer -- an old man, the first one in this country -- who made the finest cut glass. Now fly around." I flew around and we went down town. Mr. John Hoare, whose name Dorothy's father had given us, was in, and replied to our unsophisticated interrogations and ejaculations with much patience.

I said, among other things, that my friend and I wanted to make a little purchase and that perhaps he would tell us something about American cut glass.

“There isn’t any finer cut glass in the world than some of us make in this country," said he, "and if the people don't know it, it is because for twenty-five years you could go the length of Broadway and not find a dealer who would admit that he had American glass in his store, for the people were contrary, and their confidence was in foreign things. Wait a bit. 'I've come to stay and you watch me,' I used to say. 'I'll have the American ladies with their pretty noses up in the air against what is made in their own country asking for glass made in the United States.' And this is what the best of them do now, like yourselves, as I could show you by the books at home.

“Do you mind that?” holding to the light a tumbler which Dorothy had been gazing at affectionately for some time. It was as pure as a mountain stream, and the brilliant hues reflected on its prismatic surface were the wild flowers growing along the brink. "There's nothing better," said the veteran, "but of course some are made with more work on 'em."

“I hope it isn’t too expensive,” said Dorothy almost pleadingly.

“Ten dollars a dozen, miss.”

“It is mine, then!” she exclaimed, joyfully clasping her hands.

“I’m glad you’re pleased, miss, and here’s a bit of history thrown in. The sand it was made of came from Berkshire, Mass. The glass mixture costs us fifty cents a pound, and 90 per cent of what you pay for the tumbler is for labor. Every one of these little cuts has been gone into eight times with wheels or brushes. The men who make them are such as got ten or twelve dollars a week in 1850, and the same get twenty a week now. Here is a tumbler with less work, which the retailer sells now for nine dollars a dozen, for which he got twenty dollars ten years ago. The difference comes because the demand for them is always increasing, and we make so many more tumblers that we can sell them that much cheaper. Now, miss (to me), you are going to ask about the imported ones, and here is the truth. We don't pretend to sell for less money, but we promise you that you are getting a tumbler more carefully designed and cut, and of purer glass than an imported one for the same money. When the ladies understand the facts, I shouldn't wonder if there was a permanent quarantine against glass made by half-starved wretches in the old country."

“Well,” said Dorothy, “if we make our own glass here, and the poor things over there have no money from us, won't they suffer very much?"

“Now, miss, tell me this: Are you ever after hearing of a drowning man being saved by another going down and drowning with him? No. You've got to pull him up; you can't save him by holding him down. This Republican protective tariff is a life preserver around a man. The poor suffering folks in the old country must come over here and get on a Republican life preserver if they don't want to drown for the water is getting deeper over here, and John Bull's preservers are made to fit the aristocracy.

“Here, mind this.” It was a stopper from a glass decanter. “The man that makes such things at my factory gets twenty-one dollars a week, and he got seven dollars in the old country, where they don't believe in protecting the workingmen. Yet the spalpeen is voting for free trade and for only seven dollars a week here just to please Grover Cleveland and John Bull. Now, isn't he after being accommodated?"

“In England an apprentice in this business gets only three shillings and six pence a week for several years of his apprenticeship, which lasts seven years. In Austria, as that man standing by the desk, Joseph Flogel, of 326 Ninth Street, will tell you, he had to pay for his apprenticeship $100, and got no pay whatever for three years. And I pay my apprentices five or six dollars a week at the start. I pledge my word as to those facts, and think there is no better illustration of the way this Republican tariff works."

Then Dorothy and I thanked him; she gave him her address for the tumblers and we said good day.

“Hester,” said she, as we were going up the elevated steps, “it’s just such brawn and brains and 'working for the little woman' that makes our republic what it is."

“Yes,” I replied, “and blessings on the country and the sort of government that helps a man or a woman, little or big, in the fight to make a living.”

Grace Esther Drew