Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/303

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and its Green Border-Land.
289

tion of optical glass as for light-house lenses. In the exhibitions of 1851 and 1855 they exhibited discs of twenty-nine inches in diameter, the largest ever produced at that time. Both were purchased by the French Government for £1,000 each. There are from 1,500 to 2,000 hands employed in these works, representing such a combination of science, genius, skilled and varied industry as perhaps no other establishment in the world can present. For, although they are called Glass Works, when you enter the light-house department, you have ironworks on a great scale in minute ramification. In the buildings in which a common-sized lumber-yard of boards is made up into boxes for the exportation of glass to America or other foreign countries, you have wood-works of equal extent. Thus artisans of most mechanical crafts are employed in the different departments-workers in glass, brass, iron, and wood, and artists who would paint landscapes and portraits on canvas as well as glass of a high order of genius.

A working force of 1,700 men, women, and children, employed in one establishment, represents the population of a considerable town. The provision made for the religious and intellectual education of this army of employés is thoughtful, generous, and admirable, and worthy of all imitation. One of the edifices of these twenty-four acres of buildings is the school-house, in which