and were sold at five dollars a hundred. With the next
kind of match that appeared, a piece of folded sandpaper was sold, and
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.

[Illustration: 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 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 yello