In the first tariff law of the United States, enacted in 1789, Congress levied a duty of 10 per cent on various kinds of glass. Congress was petitioned, in 1790, to aid the glass works of John Frederick Amelung at New Bremen, Md. The committee of the House of Represen tatives to whom the petition was referred re ported in favor of a loan of $8,000, security to be furnished, but the report was not adopted. In the debate the statement was made that Amelung had expended $200,000 on a plant be gun in 1775. Some of the representatives con sidered that such a petition could be presented to the State more properly than to the Federal government, others objected to the loan on ac count of the precedent it would establish and others doubted the power of Congress to grant such a loan. About this time the Baltimore Glass Works began making window glass. Be tween 1760 and 1765, a German named Wister built a glass-house near Allowaystown, N. J. On his failure, at the beginning of the Revolu tion, the workmen went to Glassboro*, N. J., and established a factory, which, still in opera tion, is the oldest glass factory in the United States. Glass works were started at Temple, N. H., in 1780, window glass works at Keene, N. H., in 1814. Glass was made at New Haven, Conn., in 1789, and at Hartford also about that time.
William Penn, in a letter written in 1683, alluded to a tannery, sawmill and glass works in Lancaster, Pa., the largest flint glass factory •in the country, in which were produced richly colored bowls and goblets. The first glass works in Philadelphia of which we have a record was a plant for making green bottles and perhaps flint ware, established, in 1771, at Kensington. This plant grew until, in 1831, it was the largest glass works in the United States. It then consisted of four furnaces in which 8,000 pounds of batch were daily melted. In addition to wood and coal, the furnaces con sinned 15,000 barrels of resin brought annually from North Carolina. From 250 to 300 men and boys were employed. The product included bottles and apothecaries' vials, the prices for which when imported were extravagantly high. In 1797 a window glass factory was estab lished at Pittsburgh and another at New Geneva, on the Monongahela River, 90 miles south of Pittsburgh. These were the first glass factories west of the Alleghanies. The former was built by Maj. Isaac Craig and James O'Hara, the latter by Albert Gallatin. The former was probably the first in which coal was the fuel, and as late as 1810 wood was the fuel in all glass plants except those in or near Pittsburgh. Writing in 1803, Craig reported an average weekly production of 30 boxes of 100 feet, be sides bottles and other hollow ware to the value of one-third of the value of the window glass. He wrote that 8X 10 sold at $13.50 and
10X 12 at $15 a box. In the earlier years of the industry most factories that made window glass made also bottles and other hollow ware. For many years the imports of window glass exceeded the domestic production.
George Robinson, a carpenter, and Edward Ensell, a glassworker from England, commenced to build a flint glass-house in Pittsburgh, but, lacking sufficient capital, tney sold the un finished plant, in 1808, to Thomas Blakewell and Robert Page who completed it, and who were the first in the United States success fully to manufacture flint glass. In this plant was produced cut glass not inferior to the best cut glass from Europe. By wagons crossing the mountains, pot clay was hauled from Burl ington, N. J., and pearl ash and red lead from Philadelphia, while saltpetre was brought from the caves of Kentucky. Glassmaking in Ohio 'began at Cincinnati in 1815. The census of 1820 reported "glass window and hollow ware, chemical and philosophical to the amount of $19,000 manufactured in Hamilton County, also flint and cut glass and window glass manufactured in Muskingum County. The first glass works in Missouri, which made flint glass tumblers and other ware, were started at Saint Louis, in 1842, by a company headed by James B. Eads, who later built the Mississippi !liver bridge at Saint Louis and the jetties at the mouth of the river. The second glass works in Missouri, started in 1851, made window glass at Saint Louis.
The ingredients of flint glass were the best of sand, pearl ash, refined saltpetre and oxide of lead. What was known later as German flint or lime glass, a much inferior product, was composed of sand, lime, soda ash and nitrate of soda. In 1864 William Leighton, Sr., of Wheeling, conducted experiments with pure sand, lime; bicarbonate of soda and refined nitrate of soda and produced glass much dearer and more brilliant than any except flint glass. It was called bicarbonate glass at first and lime glass later. The cost for batch was not more than one-third that of a lead batch which it largely supplanted.
An exhibit of pressed glass ware, made by James B. Lyons, of the O'Hara Glass Works at Pittsburgh, received first prize at the Paris Exposition in 1867.• At the Centennial Exhibi tion at Philadelphia, in 1876, one of the attrac tions was a complete glass works which showed the processes of melting, blowing, pressing, cut ting, etching and annealing. The exhibit was made by Gillinder & Sons, of Philadelphia.