Pittsburgh Glass Factories

THE GLASS FACTORIES.

PITTSBURGH.

As might be expected in the last week of the year there is little or nothing doing in tableware. Dealers are either busy at home with their local trade or else squaring up the year's transactions, and they neither want much goods now nor have time to look after them. Even the retail trade will be dull now for at least five or six weeks, as people who want glassware generally buy it at or before the holidays, and the extra expenditure indulged in at this season makes them retrench for some time afterwards. Nevertheless the feeling among manufacturers here is more cheerful at present than it has been for a month or two, and they are nearly all pretty sanguine of a good and early spring trade.

The suspension of work at so many of the factories down the river will have no immediate effect here, as the houses which shut down have pretty fair stocks on hand and will continue to supply their trade, but if the works below should stay closed for any length of time it would of course result in a larger demand here, and stiffer prices all over. Every house here will have one or more new patterns ready for the spring trade; in fact, notwithstanding the depression there is as much work being done in this way as ever before. Stocks here are only of moderate dimensions, the manufacturers generally not having more than it is usual and necessary for them to carry at all seasons.

With regard to the wages question here, about which so many conflicting and absurd rumors have been afloat, it may be said authoritatively that there will be no reduction among the tableware houses; nor will there be any change in the mode of payment. All manufacturers are agreed on this point, and it is to the last degree unlikely that they will change their minds. As many inquiries have been addressed to manufacturers here from various part of the country for information on this question, a wide circulation of the fact that there is to be no reduction of wages here through the columns of the JOURNAL will go far to settle the matter.

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