This book deals with the history of Glass Industry Development in America since Columbus. "The progress of the glass industry in America has been far from constant. It has suffered severe and violent fluctuations, amounting almost to annihilation. Several times it has needed to be born again. But the sum total of these successes and vicissitudes has been the establishment of an industry which, while it is the oldest, is also at the present time one of the most promising and most highly developed of all our industries. To understand its rise and progress, one must be familiar with the elements which go to make it up. Four things are needed to make glass: crude materials; refractory substances for crucibles and furnaces; suitable fuel, and intelligent labor. To make glass commercially, a fifth factor is all important, and that is an accessible market. The history of the industry has consisted in the various possible interchanges between these elements. They are far from permanent..."
"O Carlyle!" exclaimed Emerson, in his diary, at the time 'Sartor Resartus' was being republished in America, 'the merit of glass is not to be seen, but to be seen through; but every crystal and lamina of the Carlyle glass shows.' With admirable precision this defines the proper function of a pane of glass. Decorative art, in casting about for new fields of conquest, has too frequently induced a contrary feeling; but, after all, a window-pane at its best is something to be seen through and not to be seen. It is our means of looking out upon the world and letting the sun look in upon us. The more perfectly, then, it fulfills its function, the less evidence will it bear of its evolution from such dull things as sand and lime and soda-cake. Our window-pane is transparent in all things save its own history.
