The antique glasses used in stained-glass work vary in price from 1s. a foot to 5s., the weight per foot being about 32 oz.
The wage of the workmen who have to deal with this costly material varies from 8d. to 1s. per hour.
The price of the same glass thrown under the bench, and known as "cullet," is £1 per TON.
Let us now do a little simple arithmetic, which, besides its lesson to the workers, may, I think, come as a revelation even to some employers who, content with getting work done quickly, may have hardly realised the price paid for that privilege.
Therefore these glasses are worth respectively—56 times, 140 times, and 280 times as much upon the bench as they are when thrown below it! And yet I ask you—employer or employed—is it not the case that, often—shall we not say "generally"?—in any given job as much goes below as remains above if the work is in fairly small pieces? Is not the accompanying diagram a fair illustration (fig. 63) of about the average relation of the shape cut to its margin of waste?
Fig. 63.
Employers estimate this waste variously. I have heard it placed as high as two-thirds; that is to say, that the glass, when leaded up, only measured one-third of the material used, or, in other words, that the workman had wasted twice as much as he used. This, I admit, was told me in my character as customer, and by way of explaining what I considered a high charge for work; but I suppose that no one with experience of stained-glass work would be