IV.
WHAT GLASS IS MADE OF.
In the yard below they found a man knocking the
head out of a hogshead, which proved to be full of broken glass.
"This we buy to melt over again. Good flint glass
is worth to us about two cents a pound. This cask came from New Orleans;
some of it was perhaps picked up by the rag-pickers. Did you ever watch
them turning over piles of rubbish, or raking the gutters with their hooks?
You 'll see them carefully fish out bits of flint glass, and put them into
their bags, along with old rags, old bones, and pieces of old coal. The
old rags go to the paper-makers or shoddy-makers; and the old glass, and
perhaps some of the old bones, come to us."
"What do you do with old bones?" asked Lawrence,
seeing a large pile of them in a corner of the yard.
"We use many different substances in making
different kinds of glass. We use bones-- or phosphate of lime, which is
what bones are mostly composed of-- in making opaque white glass. Now
come into the cullet-room."
"Cullet?-- what is cullet?"
The gaffer showed two old women sorting over
heaps of broken glass, and said "That is cullet."
"Where did you ever get such a name?"
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