man to handle the mold; a man to chip off the bubble left by the blower;
a shaper to finish the neck of the bottle; and a carrier-off to take the
completed bottles to the lehr. Usually the gatherer is also the blower,
in which case two men are used, one blowing while the other gathers for
his turn; but on one platform I saw the somewhat unusual sight of one
man doing all the blowing while another gathered for him. The pair used
two wands, so that their production was the same as tho two men were
gathering and blowing. This particular blower was making quart bottles,
and he was well qualified for the job. He weighed, at a conservative
estimate, two hundred and fifty pounds, and when he blew something had
to happen. I arrived at his place of labor just as the shifts were being
changed--a glass-furnace is worked continuously, in three eight-hour
shifts--and as the little whistle blew to announce the end of his day's
toil the giant grabbed the last wand, dropped it into the waiting mold,
and blew a mighty blast. A bubble of glass sprang from the mouth of the
mold, swelled to two feet in diameter, and burst with a bang, filling
the air with shimmering flakes of glass, light enough to be wafted like
motes. When the shining shower had settled and I had opened my eyes--it
would not be pleasant to get an eyeful of those beautiful scraps--the
huge blower was diminishing in perspective toward his dinner, and the
furnace door was, for the moment, without its usual hustling
congregation of workers. I made bold to investigate the platform.

Close to me glared the mouth of the furnace, with masses of silver
threads depending from it like the beard of some fiery gulleted
ogre--the strings of glass left by the withdrawal of the wand. The heat
three feet away was enough to make sand melt and run like water, but I
was not unpleasantly warm. This was because I stood at the focus of
three tin pipes, thru which streams of cold air, fan-impelled, beat upon
me. Without this cooling agent it would be impossible for men to work so