tes) is:--

/ 20) 1120 ( L56 PER TON.
100
----
120
120

At 2s. 6d. per foot (the best of pot-metal blues, and rubies
generally):--

56
56
28
---
2-1/2 times 56 = 140 L140 PER TON.

At 5s. a foot (gold-pink, and pale pink, venetian, and choice glasses
generally):--

56
x 5
---
L280 PER TON.

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?

[Illustration: 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 disposed to place the amount
of waste lower than one-half.

Now a good cutter will take between two and three hours to cut a square
foot of average stained-glass work, fairly simple and large in scale;
that is to say, supposing his pay one shilling an hour--which is about
the top price--the material he deals with is about the same value as his
time if he is using the cheapest glasses only. If this then is the case
when the highest-priced labour is dealing only with the lowest-priced
material, we may assume it as the general rule for stained-glass
cutting, _on the average_, that "_labour is less costly than the
material on which it is spent_," and I would even say much less costly.

But it is not to be supposed that the little more care in avoiding waste
which I am advocating would reduce his speed of