The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh

At the end of the nineteenth century, Pittsburgh led the nation in glass production. Glass bottle plants relied heavily on adolescent boys for their manufacturing process. These “glass house boys” worked both day and night, as plants ran around the clock to meet production demands and remain competitive with their newly automated rivals. The boys performed menial tasks, received low wages, and had little to say on their own behalf.
By the turn of the century, most states had greatly reduced the use of children in industry, but Pennsylvania lawmakers lagged behind. In The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh, James L. Flannery presents an original and compelling examination of legislative clashes over this singular issue. Through extensive research in Pennsylvania state legislature archives, National Child Labor Committee reports, and union and industry journals, Flannery uncovers a complex web of collusion between union representatives, industrialists, and legislators that kept child labor reform at bay despite national pressure, a concerted effort by reformers, and changes to education laws.

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. . . provides an enlightening picture of how labor laws are crafted and enacted.

Contemporary Sociology

Admirably explodes the myth that the advent of automated glass blowing machinery ended the industry's use of child labor. Flannery correctly points out that while the new automated factories could afford to reduce or even eliminate dependence on children, their hand competitors were forced to take the opposite strategy and intensify the use of children to make up for their competitive disadvantages. Thus, a labor-saving technology had the perverse effect of actually increasing the exploitation of children.

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

In this superb monograph, James Flannery deepens our understanding of efforts to regulate and eliminate child labor in the early twentieth century. Focusing on western Pennsylvania glass houses, the author shows how both manufacturers and glass blowers conspired to find ways around child labor laws and compulsory school attendance. Unlike earlier studies, The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh is a work of legal history. It deepens and complicates our understanding of the whole anti-child labor movement and of industrial responses. It is a vital addition to the literature on progressive reform efforts.

Joseph M. Hawes, University of Memphis

A fascinating account of the struggle to stamp out dangerous child labor in the glass bottle industry's last holdouts in western Pennsylvania. Engaging and eye-opening in its own right, Flannery's narrative has clear resonance for the fight to eliminate today's shameful exception to U.S. child labor laws that allows children to work in agriculture at younger ages, for longer hours, and under more hazardous conditions than children in any other job.

Zama Coursen-Neff, Deputy Director, Children's Rights Division, Human Rights Watch

"The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh is an elegantly crafted and gripping narrative. James Flannery uses his impressive talents as a historian, writer, and legal scholar to recreate a lost world, when America was an industrial titan and children's wages ensured the survival of many working-class families. And he shows how politicians and factory owners, union workers and parents, could effectively undermine the best-laid plans of America's leading child labor reformers."

William J. Reese, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This work makes an important contribution by explaining a complex historical problem with clarity and brevity.

Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth

Law, Technology, and Child Labor

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240 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

July, 2026

isbn : 9780822968559

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