Cheap fuel was necessary to successful glass making. How could New England coal compete with natural gas? So Ohio came to the front. A few years ago Ohio's natural gas became exhausted. Without a day's disturbance petroleum succeeded gas, and better glass was made than ever, because oil produces a more even temperature. Verily "there is a soul of goodness in things evil." From Massachusetts to Ohio, from coal to gas, from gas to petroleum, what would be the next act in the drama of American glass? What, indeed, but an act the scene of which was laid in the grounds of the World's Fair!
Believing fully in the westward course of empire, Mr. Edward D. Libbey had the inspiration that if Chicago wanted the World's Fair, Chicago would not only have it, but would create such an exposition as had never been seen. So before even the temporary organization was formed in Chicago the Libbey Glass Company filed an application for the exclusive right to manufacture glass at the Columbian Exposition.
The problem of erecting a building that should be architecturally in keeping with the surroundings, that should afford every possible comfort to the thousands of daily visitors and still be used as a manufactory, was not an easy matter.
Begun in October, 1892, the admirable building, put up in the Midway Plaisance to show the process of making glass, was finished one week before May 1st following. On that bleak opening day thousands of overshoes were stalled in mud a foot deep before the Administration Building, and the owners went home in some cases almost barefooted.
But there was an expenditure of $125,000 in an idea, and the investors had no reason to fear weather or neglect. From the opening to the closing of the big front door two million people found their way to this glass house, at which no one threw stones. The trouble was not to get people in, but to keep them out. A mob never benefits itself nor anybody else. To reduce the attendance to reasonable proportions a fee was charged, applicable to the purchase of some souvenir, made perhaps before the buyer's very eyes. Why was this glass house so popular? Because its exhibit displayed the only art industry in actual operation within the Fair grounds.
All people like machinery in motion, and the most curious people on earth are Americans. They want to know how things are made, and, like children, are not content until they have laid their hands on whatever confronts them. "Please do not touch" has no terrors for them. In addition to this inborn love of action, there is a fascination about glass blowing and the fashioning of shapeless matter piping hot from the pot that appeals to men and women of all sorts and conditions. With eyes and mouths wide open, thousands stood daily around the circular factory watching a hundred skilled artisans at work. They looked at the big central furnace, in which sand, oxide of lead, potash, saltpetre and nitrate of soda underwent vitrification; they saw it taken out of the pot a plastic mass, which, through long, hollow iron tubes, was blown and rolled and twisted and turned into things of beauty. Here was a champagne glass, there was a flower bowl; now came a decanter, followed by a jewel basket. A few minutes later jugs and goblets and vases galore passed from the nimble fingers of the artisans to the annealing oven below.
All these creations entered the oven as hot as they came from the last manipulator, but gradually cooled off to the temperature of the atmosphere. Getting used to the hardships of life requires twenty-four hours, during which the trays on which the glass stands are slowly moved from the hot to the temperate end of the oven. This procession was an object lesson in life as well as in glass. "Make haste slowly or you'll defeat yourself," was the burden of the song those things of beauty sang to themselves and to all who listened.
If American cut glass has grown beyond compare, it is largely due to the superior intelligence of American artisans. They have the "sand": so, too, have the beautiful hills of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, whence comes the purest quality the whole world has known. The best flint glass exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1867 owed its excellence to the treasure stowed away in Western Massachusetts.
The finest American flint glass of the Columbian Exposition found its inspiration in the same part of the old Bay State.
Little did those visitors to the Fair know whence came the hot fires of Libbey's Glass House. They little knew that oil was drawn in pipes from Ohio, and that one hundred and fifty barrels of petroleum lay buried under innocent-looking grass, that looked up and asked not to be trodden under foot.