Actually, my impression is that it was because of higher wages here (part of what made a tariff necessary to compete with the Europeans), but you make a good point. From Sinclaire and Spillman's The Complete Cut and Engraved Glass of Corning: "The 1880 census showed that 22 of Corning's 40 glass cutters had been born in Europe, 21 of them in England or Ireland." That's an early census, though. By 1905 there were 490 cutters and 33 engravers in Corning.