McCullough & Wilson

PROSPERITY AT FAIRMOUNT.

A Phase of the Machine Question in

the Glass Trade.

FAIRMOUNT, IND., Dec. 30. - Prosperity has at last struck Fairmount. McCullough & Wilson started the "Dinkey" today with four shops, two on each shift. The Big Four Window Glass Co. will start to blow on the 8th of next month. This will put in operation all the glass factories in Fairmount, giving employment to something over 100 glassworkers in the window and green glass trade. The starting of all the factories will prove quite a boom to the town.

The Fairmount Glass Co. was idle Christmas Eve and Christmas. McCullough & Wilson's lost four days.

Branch 35 held their first annual ball on Christmas Eve at the White House Hall. Great credit is due L. E. Tigner, Ralph Brown, Abe Gifford, Mark Parker, and James Moody, the committee of arrangements. Everybody enjoyed themselves to the utmost, and it was the most enjoyable affair of the kind that has been held in Fairmount in a long time. The Branch has been requested to hold another ball in the near future, but at the present writing I cannot say if they will comply with the request.

Your Kane, Pa., correspondent sounds a note of warning in his article "After the Machines, What?" I believe that it would repay the working people of this country to study the effect of labor saving machinery. While it is true that so far as the glass trades are concerned there has been no machine invented up to the present that has displaced skilled labor to any great extent, still there is no telling how soon some such machine may be perfected and placed upon the market. It appears that there is no limit to the inventive genius of the present age.

Another phase to this question is the increased production per capita in the glass trades. This is especially true in regard to the bottle branches. On some lines of ware the product has increased from 20 to 50 per cent per capita in the last 15 years. Some of this increase is due to the improved methods of working but the major portion is due to the increased efforts of the blowers themselves. This, I believe, is one of the causes of the great number of nonunion factories in the flint and green trades. If a man is unable to keep up the pace out he goes and some more energetic man is put in his place. The poor unfortunate, after vainly seeking work, drifts into the non-union factory and becomes an object of contempt to his former fellow-workmen. - DEE JAY.