The match is one of the most valuable and one of the most dangerous articles made by man. It has been in use for less than one hundred years, but think of trying to get along without it!
Suppose, for example, that you were camping far from any houses, and discovered, when the time came to cook dinner, that you had lost your matches. What would you do? Would you rub sticks together like the Indian or make a "bow-drill" like the Eskimo? These were the methods used by mankind for thousands and thousands of years, but they mean desperately hard work, as you would soon realize. You would be fortunate if you could find a bit of flint from which to strike sparks with steel as your great-grandfather probably did. But even in that case you would appreciate matches as never before.
It was not until the year 1827 that an English druggist named John Walker made the first practical friction-matches, known as "Congreves". A folded piece of glass-paper went with every box, and in order to light the match one had to draw it in one hand quickly through the folds of the paper held tightly pressed together with the other. Another kind of match, the "Promethean", appeared a little later. It had at one end a thin glass globule, which it was necessary to press in producing fire.
Thus people went on experimenting, for everyone was interested and there was great demand. Gradually methods of making that were better and cheaper were discovered, until, to-day, matches are found in every home.
It is said that more matches are sold in the United States than in all the rest of the world. More than seven hundred million matches are used in the United States each day. You can hardly imagine such a figure. If a factory made just one match for every minute, night and day, it would take nearly fourteen hundred years for it to produce as many matches as this country uses in a single day. Or—to put it in another way—nearly five hundred thousand flames are struck every minute on an average. There is not one of these flames that would not develop into a destructive fire if it had a chance. Consequently, every match must be regarded, and must be treated, as a possible source of great damage.
Matches, to-day, are of two general classes: Those which may be struck upon any rough surface, and the so-called "safety matches", made to be struck only upon the box. But there are good matches and bad matches in both classes. In other words, while the safety match, as a rule, is safer than the kind first mentioned, a poorly made strike-on-the-box match may be more dangerous than a well-made strike-anywhere match. Therefore, we ought to know something about what a match is, as well as how to use it.
Here is a match. What could appear more harmless? A tiny stick of wood, shorter than your finger, coated at one end with some substance that forms a little bulb, or head—who would believe that it can be either a blessing or a deadly peril, according to the way in which it is used?
The secret of fire-production lies in the head of the match. This contains certain chemicals which take fire easily when heated, and it also contains particles of ground flint in order to create heat by friction when the match is struck. If two objects are rubbed quickly together, the resulting friction brings heat, and all the more easily and quickly if one of the objects be rough. If you sandpaper a board, rubbing it hard, you will soon find both paper and board becoming warm. Thus friction from striking a match produces sufficient heat to cause the head to burst into flame.
Now, it must be remembered that even careful persons may meet with accidents through the use of bad matches. Sometimes, when struck, the blazing head will fly off, or the stick will break and fall; sometimes, too, the match will continue to glow after the flame has been blown out. These are signs that the match is poorly made; probably it is of some very cheap brand, for such things never happen with good matches. Carefulness, therefore, must begin at the time of buying. One should always notice the brand and always order by brand. Whenever a brand is found to have any of these faults it should be avoided in future, no matter how low the price may be.