If you're a glass or window installer and would like to know how much they paid a glass factory worker in the early 19th century, you've come to the right place.

Hello and a colourful welcome to all our glass friends. I'm sure you've all heard the story about how glass was supposedly invented. When a bolt of lightening hit the desert sand and turned into glass. We are unsure whether this is fact, but have listed a little bit of glass making history, enjoy.

Early Glassmaking

WINDOW GLASS has been in use since the first century and was originally made by casting, or by blowing hollow cylinders that were slit and flattened into sheet form. In later years, a new method called the crown process was introduced. In this later process, a gather of glass was blown and shaped into a flattened ball or crown. A rod was attached to the flat side and the blowpipe removed. The crown was then reheated and spun on the rod. The hole made by the blowpipe became larger and eventually the circular piece of glass, through centrifugal force flapped out into a large circular sheet of glass. The rod was cracked off, leaving a scar, or bull's-eye. Today, nearly all window glass is made mechanically by drawing glass upward from a molten pool fed from a tank furnace. In the Fourcault process the glass sheet is drawn through a slotted refractory block submerged in the surface of the glass pool into a vertical annealing furnace from which it emerges to be cut into sheets. Ordinary drawn window glass is not entirely uniform in thickness because of the nature of the process by which it is made. The variations in thickness distort the appearance of objects viewed through panes of the glass.

The traditional method of overcoming such defects has been the use of ground and polished plate glass. Plate glass was first produced at St Gobain, in France, in 1668, by pouring glass onto an iron table and rolling it flat with a roller. After annealing, the plate was ground and polished on both sides. Plate glass is now made by rolling the glass continuously between double rollers located at the end of a fore hearth. When the rough sheet has been annealed, both sides of it are finished continuously and simultaneously. Grinding and polishing are now being supplanted by the cheaper float-glass process. In this process flat surfaces are formed on both sides by floating a continuous sheet of glass on a bath of molten tin. The temperature is so high that the surface imperfections are removed by fluid flow of the glass. The temperature is gradually lowered as the glass moves along the tin bath, and the glass passes through a long annealing oven at the end. Unpolished rolled glass, often with figured surfaces produced by designs incised in the rolls, is used architecturally. Wire glass, made by introducing wire mesh into the molten glass before it passes between the rollers, resists shattering when struck. Safety glass, for such items as car windscreens, is made by sandwiching a sheet of transparent polyvinyl butyral plastic between two sheets of thin plate glass. The plastic adheres tightly to the glass and holds the broken shards in place even after hard blows.

Working in a Glass Factory in the (19th & early 20th centuries)

To work in a typical glass factory in earlier times, one would work as an unskilled labourer. An unskilled labourer was usually called boy, which did not refer to the age of the individual. Although known to perform other work, girls often worked as inspectors and packers of finished glass. They were thought to have the "keener eyesight" required to sort out poorly made glass, and would be more careful packing the finished products for shipping.

A crack-off boy would remove a finished piece of hot glassware from the end of the gaffer's blow iron by cracking it off.
A lehrboy would carry the hot glassware to the annealing lehr.
A mould boy would sit at the feet of the gaffer opening and closing the hinged blow-mould as required (sometimes, a boy would actually be allowed to blow the piece).

GETTING THE JOB: Hiring practices were not formal. With no labour unions to establish seniority, workers were sought-after for jobs because of their reputations as skilled, reliable people. A gaffer could hire and fire who ever he wanted. Often local saloons were used as hiring places. Usually the company would paid the gaffer in full, for the job and he would pay his workers whatever he wanted.

THE WORKWEEK: When factories were in full operation, a 50 to 55 hour work week was normal. Mondays through Fridays were 9 to 10-hour working days with a half-day on Saturdays. The 40-hour workweek with overtime pay ("time-and-a-half") was not introduced until the 1940's.

WAGES: In one glass factory, the average 1912 hourly wage for a male worker was 18 cents, and that of a female worker was 11 cents. They did not perform the same work. The lowest rate for a male was 15 cents and the highest rate for a female was still 11 cents. A 1917 statistic for the same factory shows that the average yearly wage for the lowest pay-rated male was $526, well above the national poverty level at the time.

YOUNGER WORKERS: Below you will see a list of glass factory workers in the 1880's, together with their ages.

Number of men and their ages.

2 x 10 year olds
4 x 11 year olds
10 x 12 year olds
16 x 13 year olds
53 x 14 year olds
83 x 15 year olds
256 x 16 year olds
199 x 17 year olds
52 x 18 year olds
127 x 19 year olds
116 x 20 year olds

WORKING CONDITIONS: Working conditions were hot and dirty, and sometimes dangerous. For that time in history, glass factory working hours was reasonable and pay was relatively good. As length of service increased, opportunities to learn a skilled trade were usually available to those who qualified. Of course, working conditions differed from factory to factory.