ON THE UTILIZATION OP WASTE. 411 



them. You might get a light for-6d. or 8d. ; at least, that was my expe- 

 rience as a boy. My seniors may have been more successful. 



In 1S34 the phosphorus-match was invented. In this, after a time, 

 sulphur became substituted for sulphide of antimony, and it was a great 

 improvement upon the old congreve. At first the phosphorus match was 

 violent in its action, and it projected its melted materials over the fingers 

 unless you held it carefully, and the reason of that was that nothing 

 but chlorate of potash was used as the oxidiser. The friction produced 

 the heat necessary to ignite the phosphorus : the chlorate of potash gave 

 it the oxygen, and it burnt violently. After a time manufacturers learnt 

 that it was better not to take chlorate of potash by itself, but to mix it with 

 some less energetic oxidising agent — as, for instance, with saltpetre or 

 nitrate of potash, or with peroxide of lead, or with some agent less ener- 

 getic than the chlorate of potash. In this way the phosphorus-match became 

 much improved in character. The sulphur, which was used to carry out 

 combustion, and to get up sufficient heat to make the wood ignite, was 

 also gradually substituted in the better kinds of matches by melted 

 stearine. The wooden match was clipped into melted stearine, and all 

 possibility of fumes of sulphur was in this way obviated. The common 

 phosphorus match became gradually improved, and its use has now 

 increased to such an extent, that it may surprise you to know 

 that there are some chemical works in this country where they 

 make nine millions of matches daily. In France and England 

 alone 300,000 pounds of phosphorus are annually made into matches, 

 and as three pounds of phosphorus are sufficient to tip five or 

 six millions of matches, you can conceive what a large industry this has 

 become. But the larger the industry has become the greater has been 

 the evil with regard to the workers. On account of the extreme cheap- 

 ness of the phosphorus-matches there is a desire to make them of the 

 cheapest materials, and as this waxy phosphorus is cheaper than the 

 allotropic phosphorus, all the common matches are, of course, made 

 with the ordinary phosphorus. I show you a better kind of matches, 

 which I hope all my hearers will encourage, which are not made with 

 the waxy phosphorus, but with the allotropic, or brown phosphorus. 

 You may easily know them by their brown ends. The allotropic phos- 

 phorus fortunately answers equally well for the purpose, and is not at 

 all poisonous to the match-makers who have to use it. There are two 

 kinds of matches made with the allotropic phosphorus. One kind is 

 made like the ordinary match, with the oxidising material and the 

 allotropic phosphorus mixed together and put upon the end of the 

 match. It, therefore, differs from the ordinary kind only in the fact 

 of its being made with allotropic phosphorus. But there is another kind 

 of match which has been manufactured, and is an exceedingly beautiful 

 invention. Here the oxidising material alone is put upon the match, 

 the phosphorus not being put upon the wood. It is not, therefore, a 

 match of the ordinary kind. You could not get it to ignite in the usual 



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