THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



ON THE MANUFACTURE OF MATCHES IN NEW YORK. 



• Behold what a great matter a little fire kindleth.' 



There are a great many people in the world who never think ; they take 

 " the goods the gods provide them," and ask no questions. It is enough for 

 them to know that the means of their comfort, convenience and enjoyment 

 exist, without stopping to inquire who has been the cause of their exist- 

 ence ; and until something occurs that places articles of every-day con- 

 sumption out of their reach, they never wonder how the world used to go 

 on without them. These people, as they walk along the streets, or are 

 dashed through the country at the rate of forty miles per hour, see the 

 telegraph posts and wires, and think the telegraph " a great convenience." 

 They read the news, which it is the means of having spread before them, 

 with their tea and toast, and never stop to consider the vastnesss of the 

 results of the invention, or the revolution it has worked, and is still work- 

 ing in the social, political and commercial world ; and -though, perhaps, 

 they may have heard of Morse, his struggles, his disappointments, the 

 antagonism he met with from ignorant incredulity or learned bigotry, the 

 sleepless nights, the weary days, the headaches and heartaches, and brain- 

 throbbings that he felt, bore, and suffered ere the world would allow him 

 to confer upon it the great good he had created, never enter their thoughts. 

 They do not " look the gift horse in the mouth," but, unlike honest Sancho, 

 they do not " bid God bless the giver." 



Steam ships and railway carriages, and printing presses, and ponderous 

 machines that work like sentient things they know exist, because they see 

 them every day and their effects every moment ; but they never stop to 

 think who called them into being, how they are made, or what the world 

 would do without them. They are like Lady Macbeth, in the play— 

 " Their eyes are open but their sense is shut." As the little miseries of 

 human life are, in the aggregate, the most important, so the little things 

 of everyday use, those things we constantly handle, see and wear, and 

 never bestow a thought upon, contribute oftentimes most to our comfort 

 and convenience. What should we do without pins ? Oo back to the days 

 of clumsy skewers, or to the primitive fish bones of the South Sea Islanders. 



VOL. II. M 



