Makers of Many Things

MAKERS OF MANY THINGS

by

EVA MARCH TAPPAN

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

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Contents

Eva March Tappan

PREFACE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

Illustrations

THE ENDLESS MATCH MACHINE

TAPPING RUBBER TREES IN SUMATRA

HOW RUBBER GOES THROUGH THE FACTORY

CUTTING HIDES INTO GLOVES

CLOSING THE GLOVE

WHERE THE GLOVE GETS ITS SHAPE

WHERE RAGS BECOME PAPER

WHERE THIS BOOK WAS SET UP

WHERE THIS BOOK WAS PRINTED

HOW THE LEAD GETS INTO A PENCIL

IN THE POTTERY

WHERE WATCHES ARE MADE

THE GOODYEAR PULLING-OVER MACHINE

IN A COTTON MILL

HOW SPUN SILK IS MADE

Eva March Tappan

Eva March Tappan was born on 26th December 1854 in Blackstone, Massachusetts, America. She is well known as a factual as well as fictional writer, but spent her early career as a teacher. Tappan was the only child of Reverend Edmund March Tappan and Lucretia Logée, and received her education at the esteemed Vassar College. This was a private coeducational liberal arts college, in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, from which she graduated in 1875. Here, Tappan was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honour society for the liberal arts and sciences, widely considered as the nations most prestigious society. She also edited the Vassar Miscellany, a college publication.

After leaving her early education, Tappan began teaching at Wheaton College, one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States, founded in 1834 and based in Norton, Massachusetts. She taught Latin and German here, from 1875 until 1880, before moving on to the Raymond Academy in Camden, New Jersey where she was associate Principal until 1894. Tappan also received a graduate degree in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. This allowed her to pursue her first love, that of reading and writing, and she taught as head of the English department at the English High School at Worcester, Massachusetts.

It was only after this date that Tappan began her literary career, writing about famous characters in history, often aimed at educating children in important historical themes and epochs. Some of her better known works include, In the Days of William the Conqueror (1901) and In the Days of Queen Elizabeth (1902), The Out-of-Door Book (1907), When Knights Were Bold (1911) and The Little Book of the Flag (1917). Tappan never married, being a happy singleton, and died on 29th January 1930, aged seventy-five.

PREFACE

The four books of this series have been written not merely to provide agreeable reading matter for children, but to give them information. When a child can look at a steel pen not simply as an article furnished by the city for his use, but rather as the result of many interesting processes, he has made a distinct growth in intelligence. When he has begun to apprehend the fruitfulness of the earth, both above ground and below, and the best way in which its products may be utilized and carried to the places where they are needed, he has not only acquired a knowledge of many kinds of industrial life which may help him to choose his life-work wisely from among them, but he has learned the dependence of one person upon other persons, of one part of the world upon other parts, and the necessity of peaceful intercourse. Best of all, he has learned to see. Wordsworth’s familiar lines say of a man whose eyes had not been opened,—

"A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more."

These books are planned to show the children that there is something more; to broaden their horizon; to reveal to them what invention has accomplished and what wide room for invention still remains; to teach them that reward comes to the man who improves his output beyond the task of the moment; and that success is waiting, not for him who works because he must, but for him who works because he may.

Acknowledgment is due to the Diamond Match Company, Hood Rubber Company, S. D. Warren Paper Company, The Riverside Press, E. Faber, C. Howard Hunt Pen Company, Waltham Watch Company, Mark Cross Company, I. Prouty & Company, Cheney Brothers, and others, whose advice and criticism have been of most valuable aid in the preparation of this volume.

Eva March Tappan.

I

THE LITTLE FRICTION MATCH

I remember being once upon a time ten miles from a store and one mile from a neighbor; the fire had gone out in the night, and the last match failed to blaze. We had no flint and steel. We were neither Indians nor Boy Scouts, and we did not know how to make a fire by twirling a stick. There was nothing to do but to trudge off through the snow to the neighbor a mile away and beg some matches. Then was the time when we appreciated the little match and thought with profound respect of the men who invented and perfected it.

It is a long way from the safe and reliable match of to-day back to the splinters that were soaked in chemicals and sold together with little bottles of sulphuric acid. The splinter was expected to blaze when dipped into the acid. Sometimes it did blaze, and sometimes it did not; but it was reasonably certain how the acid would behave, for it would always sputter and do its best to spoil some one’s clothes. Nevertheless, even such matches as these were regarded as a wonderful convenience, 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.

THE ENDLESS MATCH MACHINE

The match splints are set in tiny holes like pins in a pincushion, and the belt revolves,