The Lucifer Match
by Charles Knight (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.1 #3 (13 Apr 1850).
Some twenty years ago the process of obtaining fire, in every house in England, with few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and as uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to produce a flame by the friction of two dry sticks.
The nightlamp and the rushlight were for the comparatively luxurious. In the bed-rooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the small tradesman, the infant at its mother's side too often awoke, like Milton's nightingale, 'darkling,'—but that 'nocturnal note' was something different from 'harmonious numbers.' The mother was soon on her feet; the friendly tinder-box was duly sought. Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon the sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint ply the sympathetic steel. The room is bright with the radiant shower. But the child, familiar enough with the operation, is impatient at its tediousness, and shouts till the mother is frantic. At length one lucky spark does its office—the tinder is alight. Now for the match. It will not burn. A gentle breath is wafted into the murky box; the face that leans over the tinder is in a glow. Another match, and another, and another. They are all damp. The toil-worn father 'swears a prayer or two'; the baby is inexorable; and the misery is only ended when the goodman has gone to the street door, and after long shivering has obtained a light from the watchman.
In this, the beginning of our series of Illustrations of Cheapness, let us trace this antique machinery through the various stages of its production.
The tinder-box and the steel had nothing peculiar. The tinman made the one as he made the saucepan, with hammer and sheers; the other was forged at the great metal factories of Sheffield and Birmingham; and happy was it for the purchaser if it were something better than a rude piece of iron, very uncomfortable to grasp. The nearest chalk quarry supplied the flint. The domestic manufacture of the tinder was a serious affair. At due seasons, and very often if the premises were damp, a stifling smell rose from the kitchen, which, to those who were not intimate with the process, suggested doubts whether the house were not on fire. The best linen rag was periodically burnt, and its ashes deposited in the tinman's box, pressed down with a close fitting lid upon which the flint and steel reposed. The match was chiefly an article of itinerant traffic. The chandler's shop was almost ashamed of it. The mendicant was the universal match-seller. The girl who led the blind beggar had invariably a basket of matches. In the day they were vendors of matches—in the evening manufacturers. On the floor of the hovel sit two or three squalid children, splitting deal with a common knife. The matron is watching a pipkin upon a slow fire. The fumes which it gives forth are blinding as the brimstone is liquifying. Little bundles of split deal are ready to be dipped, three or four at a time. When the pennyworth of brimstone is used up, when the capital is exhausted, the night's labour is over. In the summer, the manufacture is suspended, or conducted upon fraudulent principles. Fire is then needless; so delusive matches must be produced—wet splints dipped in powdered sulphur. They will never burn, but they will do to sell to the unwary maid-of-all-work.
About twenty years ago Chemistry discovered that the tinder-box might be abolished. But Chemistry set about its function with especial reference to the wants and the means of the rich few. In the same way the first printed books were designed to have a great resemblance to manuscripts, and those of the wealthy class were alone looked to as the purchasers of the skilful imitations. The first chemical light-producer was a complex and ornamental casket, sold at a guinea. In a year or so, there were pretty portable cases of a phial and matches, which enthusiastic young housekeepers regarded as the cheapest of all treasures at five shillings. By and bye the light-box was sold as low as a shilling. The fire revolution was slowly approaching. The old dynasty of the tinder-box maintained its predominance for a short while in kitchen and garret, in farmhouse and cottage. At length some bold adventurer saw that the new chemical discovery might be employed for the production of a large article of trade—that matches, in themselves the vehicles of fire without aid of spark and tinder, might be manufactured upon the factory system—that the humblest in the land might have a new and indispensable comfort at the very lowest rate of cheapness. When Chemistry saw that phosphorus, having an affinity for oxygen at the lowest temperature, would
ignite upon slight friction,—and so ignited would ignite sulphur, which required a much higher temperature to become inflammable, thus making the phosphorus do the work of the old tinder with far greater certainty; or when Chemistry found that chlorate of potash by slight friction might be exploded so as to produce combustion, and might be safely used in the same combination—a blessing was bestowed upon society that can scarcely be measured by those who have had no former knowledge of the miseries and privations of the tinder-box. The Penny Box of Lucifers, or Congreves, or by whatever name called, is a real triumph of Science, and an advance in Civilisation.
Let us now look somewhat closely and practically into the manufacture of a Lucifer-match.
The combustible materials used in the manufacture render the process an unsafe one. It cannot be carried on in the heart of towns without being regarded as a common nuisance. We must therefore go somewhere in the suburbs of London to find such a trade. In the neighbourhood of Bethnal Green there is a large open space called Wisker's Gardens. This is not a place of courts and alleys, but a considerable area, literally divided into small gardens, where just now the crocus and the snowdrop are telling hopefully of the spring-time. Each garden has the smallest of cottages—for the most part wooden—which have been converted from summer-houses into dwellings. The whole place reminds one of numberless passages in the old dramatists, in which the citizens' wives are described in their garden-houses of Finsbury, or Hogsden, sipping syllabub and talking fine on summer holidays. In one of these garden-houses, not far from the public road, is the little factory of 'Henry Lester, Patentee of the Domestic Safety Match-box,' as his label proclaims. He is very ready to show his processes, which in many respects are curious and interesting.
Adam Smith has instructed us that the business of making a pin is divided into about eighteen distinct operations; and further, that ten persons could make upwards of forty-eight thousand pins a day with the division of labour; while if they had all wrought independently and separately, and without any of them having been educated to this peculiar business, they certainly could not each of them have made twenty. The Lucifer Match is a similar example of division of labour, and the skill of long practice. At a separate factory, where there is a steam-engine, not the refuse of the carpenter's shop, but the best Norway deals are cut into splints by machinery, and are supplied to the match-maker. These little pieces, beautifully accurate in their minute squareness, and in their precise length of five inches, are made up into bundles, each of which contains eighteen hundred. They are daily brought on a truck to the dipping-house, as it is called—the average number of matches finished off daily requiring two hundred of these bundles. Up to this point we have had several hands employed in the preparation of the match, in connection with the machinery that cuts the wood. Let us follow one of these bundles through the subsequent processes. Without being separated, each end of the bundle is first dipped into sulphur. When dry, the splints, adhering to each other by means of the sulphur, must be parted by what is called dusting. A boy sitting oil the floor, with a bundle before him, strikes the matches with a sort of a mallet on the dipped ends till they become thoroughly loosened. In the best matches the process of sulphur-dipping and dusting is repeated. They have now to be plunged into a preparation of phosphorus or chlorate of potash, according to the quality of the match. The phosphorus produces the pale, noiseless fire; the chlorate of potash the sharp cracking illumination. After this application of the more inflammable substance, the matches are separated, and dried in racks. Thoroughly dried, they are gathered up again into bundles of the same quantity; and are taken to the boys who cut them; for the reader will have observed that the bundles have been dipped at each end. There are few things more remarkable in manufactures than the extraordinary rapidity of this cutting process, and that which is connected with it. The boy stands before a bench, the bundle on his right hand, a pile of half opened empty boxes on his left, which have been manufactured at another division of this establishment. These boxes are formed of scale-board, that is, thin slices of wood, planed or scaled off a plank. The box itself is a marvel of neatness and cheapness It consists of an inner box, without a top, in which the matches are placed, and of an outer case, open at each end, into which the first box slides. The matches, then, are to be cut, and the empty boxes filled by one boy. A bundle is opened; he seizes a portion, knowing by long habit the required number with sufficient exactness; puts them rapidly into a sort of frame, knocks the ends evenly together, confines them with a strap which he tightens with his foot, and cuts them in two parts with a knife on a hinge, which he brings down with a strong leverage: the halves lie projecting over each end of the frame; he grasps the left portion and thrusts it into a half open box, which lie instantly closes, and repeats the process with the matches on his right hand. This series of movements is performed with a rapidity almost unexampled; for in this way, two hundred thousand matches are cut, and two thousand boxes filled in a day, by one boy, at the wages of three halfpence per gross of boxes. Each dozen boxes is then papered up, and they are ready for the retailer. The number of boxes daily filled at this factory is from fifty to sixty gross.
The wholesale price per dozen boxes of the best matches, is FOURPENCE, of the second quality, THREEPENCE.
There are about ten Lucifer Match manufactories in London. There are others in large provincial towns. The wholesale business is chiefly confined to the supply of the metropolis and immediate neighbourhood by the London makers; for the railroad carriers refuse to receive the article, which is considered dangerous in transit. But we must not therefore assume that the metropolitan population consume the metropolitan matches. Taking the population at upwards of two millions, and the inhabited houses at about three hundred thousand, let us endeavour to estimate the distribution of these little articles of domestic comfort.
At the manufactory at Wisker's Gardens there are fifty gross, or seven thousand two hundred boxes, turned out daily, made from two hundred bundles, which will produce seven hundred and twenty thousand matches. Taking three hundred working days in the year, this will give for one factory, two hundred and sixteen millions of matches annually, or two millions one hundred and sixty thousand boxes, being a box of one hundred matches for every individual of the London population. But there are ten other Lucifer manufactories, which are estimated to produce about four or five times as many more. London certainly cannot absorb ten millions of Lucifer boxes annually, which would be at the rate of thirty three boxes to each inhabited house. London, perhaps, demands a third of the supply for its own consumption; and at this rate the annual retail cost for each house is eightpence, averaging those boxes sold at a halfpenny, and those at a penny. The manufacturer sells this article, produced with such care as we have described, at one farthing and a fraction per box.
And thus, for the retail expenditure of three farthings per month, every house in London, from the highest to the lowest, may secure the inestimable blessing of constant fire at all seasons, and at all hours. London buys this for ten thousand pounds annually.
The excessive cheapness is produced by the extension of the demand, enforcing the factory division of labour, and the most exact saving of material. The scientific discovery was the foundation of the cheapness. But connected with this general principle of cheapness, there are one or two remarkable points, which deserve attention.
It is a law of this manufacture that the demand is greater in the summer than in the winter. The old match maker, as we have mentioned, was idle in the summer—without fire for heating the brimstone—or engaged in more profitable field-work. A worthy woman who once kept a chandler's shop in a village, informs us, that in summer she could buy no matches for retail, but was obliged to make them for her customers. The increased summer demand for the Lucifer Matches shows that the great consumption is amongst the masses—the labouring population—those who make up the vast majority of the contributors to duties of customs and excise. In the houses of the wealthy there is always fire; in the houses of the poor, fire in summer is a needless hourly expense. Then comes the Lucifer Match to supply the want; to light the candle to look in the dark cupboard—to light the afternoon fire to boil the kettle. It is now unnecessary to run to the neighbour for a light, or, as a desperate resource, to work at the tinder-box. The Lucifer Matches sometimes fail, but they cost little, and so they are freely used, even by the poorest.
And this involves another great principle. The demand for the Lucifer Match is always continuous, for it is a perishable article. The demand never ceases. Every match burnt demands a new match to supply its place. This continuity of demand renders the supply always equal to the demand. The peculiar nature of the commodity prevents any accumulation of stock; its combustible character—requiring the simple agency of friction to ignite it—renders it dangerous for large quantities of the article to be kept in one place. Therefore no one makes for store, but all for immediate sale. The average price, therefore, must always yield a profit, or the production would altogether cease. But these essential qualities limit the profit. The manufacturers cannot be rich without secret processes or monopoly. The contest is to obtain the largest profit by economical management. The amount of skill required in the labourers, and the facility of habit, which makes fingers act with the precision of machines, limit the number of labourers, and prevent their impoverishment. Every condition of this cheapness is a natural and beneficial result of the laws that govern production.