the buyer was told to pinch it hard and draw the match through the fold. These matches were amazingly cheap—eighty-four of them for only twenty-five cents! There have been all sorts of odd matches. One kind actually had a tiny glass ball at the end full of sulphuric acid. To light this, you had to pinch the ball and the acid that was thus let out acted upon the other chemicals on the match and kindled it—or was expected to kindle it, which was not always the same thing.

Making matches is a big business, even if one hundred of them are sold for a cent. It is estimated that on an average each person uses seven matches every day. To provide so many would require some seven hundred million matches a day in this country alone. It seems like a very simple matter to cut a splinter of wood, dip it into some chemicals, and pack it into a box for sale; and it would be simple if it were all done by hand, but the matches would also be irregular and extremely expensive. The way to make anything cheap and uniform is to manufacture it by machinery.

THE ENDLESS MATCH MACHINE

The match splints are set in tiny holes like pins in a pincushion, and the belt revolves, passing their heads through various chemicals.

The first step in making matches is to select some white-pine plank of good quality and cut it into blocks of the proper size. These are fed into a machine which sends sharp dies through them and thus cuts the match splints. Over the splint cutter a carrier chain is continuously moving, and into holes

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in this chain the ends of the match splints are forced at the rate of ten or twelve thousand a minute.

The splints remain in the chain for about an hour, and during this hour all sorts of things happen to them. First, they are dipped into hot paraffin wax, because this will light even more easily than wood. As soon as the wax is dry, the industrious chain carries them over a dipping-roll covered with a layer consisting partly of glue and rosin. Currents of air now play upon the splint, and in about ten minutes the glue and rosin on one end of it have hardened into a hard bulb. It is not a match yet by any means, for scratching it would not make it light. The phosphorus which is to make it into a match is on another dipping-roll. This is sesqui-sulphide of phosphorus. The common yellow phosphorus is poisonous, and workmen in match factories where it was used were in danger of suffering from a terrible disease of the jaw bone. At length it was discovered that sesqui-sulphide of phosphorus would make just as good matches and was harmless. Our largest match company held the patent giving them the exclusive right to certain processes by which the sesqui-sulphide was made; and this patent they generously gave up to the people of the United States.

After the splints have been dipped into the preparation of phosphorus, they are carried about on the chain vertically, horizontally, on the outside of some wheels and the inside of others, and through currents of air. Then they are turned over to a chain divided

into sections which carries them to a packing-machine. This machine packs them into boxes, a certain number in each box, and they are slid down to girls who make the boxes into packages. These are put into wooden containers and are ready for sale.

As in most manufactures, these processes must be carried on with great care and exactness. The wood must be carefully selected and of straight grain, the dipping-rolls must be kept covered with a fresh supply of composition, and its depth must be always uniform. Even the currents of air in which the splints are dried must be just warm enough to dry them and just moist enough not to dry them too rapidly.

The old sulphur matches made in "card and block" can no longer be bought in this country; the safety match has taken their place. One kind of safety match has the phosphorus on the box and the other igniting substances on the match, so that the match will not light unless it is scratched on the box; but this kind has never been a favorite in the United States. The second kind, the one generally used, may be struck anywhere, but these matches are safe because even stepping upon one will not light it; it must be scratched.

A match is a little thing, but nothing else can do its work.

II

ABOUT INDIA RUBBER

When you pick a dandelion or a milkweed, a white sticky "milk" oozes out; and this looks just like the juice of the various sorts of trees, shrubs, and vines from which India rubber is made. The "rubber plant" which has been such a favorite in houses is one of these; in India it becomes a large tree which has the peculiar habit of dropping down from its branches "bush-ropes," as they are called. These take root and become stout trunks. There is literally a "rubber belt" around the world, for nearly all rubber comes from the countries lying between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. More than half of all that is brought to market is produced in the valley of the Amazon River; and some of this "Para rubber," as it is called, from the seaport whence it is shipped, is the best in the world.

Courtesy General Rubber Co.

TAPPING RUBBER TREES IN SUMATRA

The plantation on which this photograph was taken has 45,000 acres of planted rubber trees, and employs 14,000 coolies.

The juice or latex flows best about sunrise, and so the natives who collect it have to be early risers. They make little cuts in the bark of the tree, stick on with a bit of clay a tiny cup underneath each cut, and move on through the forest to the next tree. Sometimes they make narrow V-shaped cuts in the bark, one above another, but all coming into a perpendicular channel leading to the foot of the

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tree. Later in the day the collectors empty the cups into great jugs and carry them to the camp.

When the rubber juice reaches the camp, it is poured into a great bowl. The men build a fire of sticks, and always add a great many palm nuts, which are oily and make a good deal of smoke. Over the fire they place an earthen jar shaped like a cone, but without top or bottom. Now work begins. It is fortunate that it can be done in the open air, and that the man can sit on the windward side, for the smoke rises through the smaller hole thick and black and suffocating. The man takes a stick shaped like a paddle, dips it into the bowl, and holds it in the smoke and heat, turning it rapidly over and over till the water is nearly dried out of the rubber and it is no longer milky, but dark-colored. Then he dips this paddle in again and again. It grows heavier at each dipping, but he keeps on till he has five or six pounds of rubber. With a wet knife he cuts this off, making what are called "biscuits." After many years of this sort of work, some one found that by resting one end of a pole in a crotched stick and holding the other in his hand, a man could make a much larger biscuit.

For a long time people thought that rubber trees could not be cultivated. One difficulty in taking them away from their original home to plant is that the seeds are so