Waterbury evening Democrat., 1907-12-26
MATCH MAKERS ANXIOUS.
Decreasing Supply of Timber Is AL
 ready Worrying Manufacturers.

ready worrying Manu1acturers'
 It is perhaps more characteristic of Americans than of any other peo pie to hold small things in contempt forgetting that little drops of water little grains of sand constitute th' planet we inhabit. A match is small and insignificant affair, ye multiplied as 1t has been in thi! country and the rest of the civilized world it has been one of the mos potential agents of modern materia development, says the Boston Tran script. It has come into use at late day in the worlds history. There are many living among us still who can remember when the flint anC finder were the regular means o1 starting a fresh fire, and the ole one was carefully preserved by bury ing the embers night after night tc eighty years ago the present year that the lucifer match, the first genu. ! inc friction match, was invented and even that required an attach ment of bent sandpaper to produce the desired results.
 It is hard for the present genera tion to realize the inconveniences from which the friction match eman- cipated their ancestors. The manu- facture of this product has become a great and even somewhat diversi- fled industry, because every section seems to have matches peculiar to itself. A man who has been a con- mercial traveller for many years tells us that if he were taken up and car ried to any point east of the Ale ghanies he could tell within a hun dred miles of where he was by the matches he should find in use. There is also a national pride in matches. A recent mayor of Manchester, Eng land, visiting friends in Boston few days ago, spoke very highly of our "abominable matches" and declared that he did not see how a high-spir- ited, independent and enterprising people like ourselves put up with them.
 The American people, however, ap- pear to be fairly well contented with the home product, else they would not buy and consume so many with comparatively so little grumbling. They use up about 100000, 0,000 a year or about half of all that are manufactured in the world. There are hundreds of factories scattered over the country, one plant on the Pacific coast covering 240 acres and operating over thirty miles of rail- road, over which is carried to it daily 100000 feet of sugar pine and yellow pine logs for the match machines. Inferior lumber will not do. It must be straight-grained and free from knots and carefully treated in addi- tion. The by-product goes into larger things. The factory on the Pacific coast referred to turns out as this by-product thousand doors and 800 window sashes daily. In a single year one match company in the lake region cut 5,000,000 board feet of pine, though that was intended for more than a years product.
 It is no wonder, when We consider these figures, that the matchmakers are becoming anxious. And that is true in other countries as we'll as our own. In Germany and France there is movement to have forests plant ed just for match timber, and we may soon face a famine in match wood in this country, for not all kinds can be used for that purpose.
 It may also happen that inven- tion may develop something that will take the place of matches. It is not probable that the limit of progress has been reached in the means of producing fire at need. There is no Promothean penalty for the man who shall make the discovery, but rather welcome and reward by his eager fel- lOWmen.