The Boy With the U.S. Census eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about The Boy With the U.S. Census.

The Boy With the U.S. Census eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 284 pages of information about The Boy With the U.S. Census.

As he said the last words, the “crusader” hurried away in response to a call from one of the men.  He resumed his carrying in of the red-hot bottles from the benches where the men had been molding them, to the annealing oven, and for a time Hamilton watched him.  The work was a fearful strain.  Sitting where he was, Hamilton could see all the way to the annealing oven.  Counting the number of steps the “crusader” had to take, Hamilton found the distance to be about one hundred feet, and watching another boy, who was working regularly, not intermittently as was the city lad’s new acquaintance, he found that seventy-two trips an hour were made, making the distance covered in eight hours nearly twenty-two miles.

The red-hot bottles were carried in asbestos shovels, and these had to be kept fairly straight, imposing a terrific strain upon the back.  In addition to this, the boys were compelled to face the furnace each time they came back, passing from the heat of the melting oven, in front of a draughty open door, to the heat of the annealing oven.

In order to keep up with the work, the boys had to run, for it could not be done at a walk, and thus were alternately greatly overheated and chilled with icy draughts.

Seeing that the “crusader” would be busy for a while, but wanting to take the matter up with him further, Hamilton strolled over to where the glass-blowers were working.  This particular factory was turning out cheap glass bottles, and there was little of the fascination that exists in factories where high-grade glass is made into many curious shapes and blown with great skill into marvelous thinness.  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.  The manufacturer’s got to make his little profit somewhere an’ in a cheap bottle he makes it by employin’ young boys cheap an’ workin’ ’em till they drop.”

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The Boy With the U.S. Census from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.