Eva March Tappan

“ The cylinders move rapidly, the flats slowly, and the cotton passes between them. It comes out in a dainty white film not so very much heavier than a spider's web, and so beautifully white and shining that it does not seem as if the big, oily, noisy machines could ever have produced it. In a moment, however, it is gone somewhere into the depths of the machine. ”

“ No one who has ever tried to use a pencil of real lead could fail to appreciate graphite, and when a graphite mine was discovered in England, it was guarded by armed men as watchfully as if it had been a mine of diamonds. ”

“ He holds his bent finger against the top of the bowl, and it becomes a vase. With another touch of his magical finger the top of the vase rolls over into a lip. If he makes a cup or a mug, he models a handle in clay and fastens it in place with slip. When it is done, he draws a wire deftly between the article and the table, and puts it on a board to dry.
When you watch a potter at work, it all looks so simple and easy that you feel sure you could do it; but see how skillfully he uses his hands, how strong they are, and yet how lithe and delicate in their movements. ”

“ HOW THE WHEELS OF A WATCH GO AROUND
If an electric automobile could be charged in fifteen seconds and then would run for forty hours without recharging, it would be looked upon as a great wonder; but to wind a watch in fifteen seconds and have it run for forty hours is so common that we forget what a wonder it is. When you wind your watch, you put some of the strength of your own right hand into it, and that is what makes it go. Every turn of the key or the stem winds up tighter and tighter a spring from one to two feet long, but so slender that it would take thousands to weigh a pound. ”

“ If the thread breaks, a tiny "faller," such as are used in cotton mills, falls down and stops the machine. The silk must now be twisted, subjected to two or three processes to increase its luster, and dyed,—and if you would like to feel as if you were paying a visit to a rainbow, go into a mill and watch the looms with their smooth, brilliant silks of all the colors that can be imagined. After the silk is woven, it is polished on lustering machines, singed to destroy all bits of free fibers or lint, freed of all threads that may project, and scoured if it is of a light color ”

“ Did you ever stop to think how many different qualities you expect in a shoe? You want the sole to be hard and firm so as to protect your feet in rough walking; and also soft and yielding so as to feel springy and not board-like. You want the upper leather to keep the cold air from coming in; and also porous enough to let the perspiration out. Your feet are not exactly like those of any one else; and yet you expect to find at any shoe store a comfortable shoe ready-made. ”

“ To make the "gilt-band china" so beloved by the good housewives of the last century, the decorator puts the plate upon a horizontal wheel, holds his brush full of gold against it, and turns the wheel slowly. ”

“ If you look closely at the outside of a steel pen just above the nib, you will see that across it run tiny lines. They have a use, for they hold the ink back so that it will not roll down in drops, and they help to make the point more springy and easier to write with.
The pen must be slit up from the point. This is done by a machine, and a most accurate one, for the cut must go exactly through the center of the point and not reach beyond the little hole that was punched. Only one thing is lacking now to make the pen a useful member of society, ready to do its work in the world ”

“ The jewels, which are pieces of rubies, sapphires, garnets, or even diamonds, are very valuable to a watch. When you know that the little wheels are in constant motion, and that the balance wheel, for instance, vibrates eighteen thousand times an hour, it is plain that a vast amount of wear comes upon the spot where the pivots of these wheels rest. No metal can be made smooth enough to prevent friction, and there is no metal hard enough to prevent wear. ”

“ You expect that shoe to come close to your foot, and yet allow you to move it with perfect freedom. You expect all these good qualities, and what is more remarkable, it does not seem difficult for most people to get them. There is an old saying, "To him who wears shoes, the whole earth is covered with leather"; and although many different materials have been tried in shoemaking, leather is the only one that has proved satisfactory, for the sole of the shoe at least. Of late, however, rubber and rubber combinations and felts and felt combinations have been used. ”

“ With so many shams in the market, how is a woman to know what she is buying and whether it will wear? There are a few simple tests that are helpful. Ravel a piece of silk and examine the warp and woof. If they are of nearly the same size, the silk is not so likely to split. See how strong the thread is. Burn a thread. If it burns with a little flame, it is cotton. If it curls up and smells like burning wool, it is probably silk. Another test by fire is to burn a piece of the goods. If it is silk, it will curl up; if it is heavily weighted, it will keep its shape. ”

“ Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, for a single factory in the United States makes more than six hundred kinds of pencils, and makes so many of them that if they were laid end to end they would reach three times across the continent. ”

“ Now the pens are ready so far as usefulness goes, but people have preferences in color. Some prefer bronze, some gray, and some black; so off the pens go to the tempering-room, their last trip, and there are heated in a revolving cylinder till the right color appears; then they are chilled and lacquered, put into boxes, labeled, packed, and sold for such low prices that the good folk of a century ago, who paid from twenty-five to fifty cents for a pen, would have opened their eyes in amazement. When the typewriter was invented, some people said, "That will be the death of the steel pen" ”

“ When a manuscript goes to the press to be set up in this way, the copy is given to the keyboard operator who sets it up on a machine which looks much like a typewriter. Instead of writing letters, however, the machine punches tiny holes in a strip of paper which is wound on a roll. When the roll is full it goes to the casting room where it is put on another machine containing hot type metal and bronze matrices from which the letters of the words are to be cast. The holes in the paper guide the machine to make the type much as a perforated music roll guides a piano to play a tune. ”

“ They can be as pretty as any one could wish, but so cheap that after each meal they can be dropped into the fire. Indeed, there are few things in a house, except a stove, that cannot be made of some form of paper,—and perhaps that too will be some day. ”

“ After the worms have shed their skins four times and then eaten as much as they possibly can for eight or ten days, they begin to feel as if they had had enough. They now eat very little and really become smaller. They are restless and wander about. Now and then they throw out threads of silk as fine as a spider's web. They know exactly what they want; each little worm wants to make a cocoon, and all they ask of you is to give them the right sort of place to make it in. When they live out of doors in freedom, they fasten their cocoons to twigs ”

“ If the sliver breaks, the support falls, and this stops the machine. Again, if one of the threads of the warp breaks when it is being wound on the beam, a slender bent wire that has been hung on it falls. It drops between two rollers and stops them. Then the workman knows that something is wrong, and a glance will show where attention is needed. Success in a cotton mill demands constant attention to details. A mill manager who has been very successful has given to those of less experience some wise directions about running a mill. ”

“ When graphite was first used for pencils, it was cut into slabs and these slabs into small strips. The broken and powdered graphite was not used until it was discovered that it could be mixed with clay and so [52] made into sticks. In a lead pencil there are only three substances, graphite, clay, and wood, but a really good one must be manufactured with as much care as if it were made up of twenty. First of all, the graphite is ground and ground and ground, until, if you take a pinch of it between your thumb and finger, you can hardly feel that anything is there. ”

“ When you press the point on paper to write, the needle falls back just enough to let out what ink is needed. The flow stops the instant the pen ceases to touch the paper. The special advantage of the stylographic is that the mere weight of the pen is sufficient pressure, and therefore many hours of writing do not tire the muscles of the hand. The advantage of the fountain pen is that it has the familiar action of the gold pen, and that it will adapt itself to any style of handwriting. ”

“ With a magnifying glass it is easy to count the threads of the warp in an inch of cloth. Some kinds of cloth have a hundred or even more to the inch. In order to make cloth, the weaver must manage in some way to lower every other one of these little threads and run his shuttle over them, as the children do the strips of paper in their paper weaving. ”

“ As wheels are made now, the potter sits at his work and turns the wheel by means of a treadle.
Almost any kind of clay will make a dish, but no one kind will make it so well that the addition of some other kind would not improve it. Whatever clays are chosen, they must be prepared with great care [57] to make sure that not one grain in them is coarser than any other. Sometimes one will slip through, and you can see on the finished dish what a bad-looking place it makes. Even for the coarsest earthenware, such as flower-pots, the moist clay is forced down a cylinder and through a wire sieve ”

“ Paper screws are employed in ornamental wood work, and if a hole is begun for such a screw, it will twist its way into soft wood as well as steel would do. Barrels of paper reinforced with wire are common. Gear wheels and belt pulleys are made of papier maché, and even the wheels of railroad coaches; at least the body of the wheels is made of it, although the tire, hub, and axle are of cast-steel. Circular saws of pulp are in use which cut thin slices of veneer so smoothly that they can be used without planing. ”

“ It is fortunate that it can be done in the open air, and that the man can sit on the windward side, for the smoke rises through the smaller hole thick and black and suffocating. The man takes a stick shaped like a paddle, dips it into the bowl, and holds it in the smoke and heat, turning it rapidly over and over till the water is nearly dried out of the rubber and it is no longer milky, but dark-colored. Then he dips this paddle in again and again. It grows heavier at each dipping, but he keeps on till he has five or six pounds of rubber. ”

“ The Government of the United States tests paper in several ways before buying it. First, a single sheet is weighed; then a ream is put on the scales to see if it weighs four hundred and eighty times as much. This shows whether the paper runs evenly in weight. Many sheets are folded together and measured to see if the thickness is regular. To test its strength, a sheet is clamped over a hole one square inch in area, and liquid is pressed against it from below to see how much it will stand before bursting. Strips of the paper are pulled in a machine to test its breaking strength. ”

“ After a while sewing machines were invented, and factories were built, and now in a single county of the State of New York many thousand people are at work making various kinds of leather coverings for their own hands and those of other folk. Better methods of tanning have been discovered, and many sorts of leather are now used, especially for the heavier gloves. Deer are not so common as they used to be, and a "buckskin" glove is quite likely to have been made of the hide of a cow or a horse. ”

“ Paper made of properly prepared linen and cotton is by far the best, but there are so many new uses for paper that there are not rags enough in the world to make nearly what is needed. There are scores of newspapers and magazines where there used to be one; and as for paper bags and cartons and boxes, there is no limit to their number and variety. A single manufacturer of pens and pencils calls for four thousand different sorts and sizes of boxes. ”

“ He puts his foot on the treadle of the even threads and sends the shuttle back over the even and under the odd. At each trip of the shuttle, the heavy reed is drawn back toward the weaver to push the last thread of the woof or filling firmly into place.
This is the way cloth is woven in the hand looms which used to be in every household. The power loom used in factories is, even in its simplest form, a complicated machine; but its principle is exactly the same. If colors are to be used, great care is needed in arranging warp and woof. ”

“ Transfer or carbon papers so much used in making several copies of an article on the typewriter are made by coating paper with starch, flour, gum, and coloring matter. Paper can be used for shoes and hats, ties, collars, and even for "rubbers." It has been successfully used for sails for light vessels, and is excellent made into light garments for hospital use because it is so cheap that it can be burned after wearing. Wood pulp can be run through fine tubes into water and made so pliable that it can be twisted into cord or spun and woven into "silk." ”

“ The four books of this series have been written not merely to provide agreeable reading matter for children, but to give them information. When a child can look at a steel pen not simply as an article furnished by the city for his use, but rather as the result of many interesting processes, he has made a distinct growth in intelligence. ”

“ The farmer provided the leather, which he had tanned from the hides of his own cattle. Now, however, manufacturers can buy the soles of one merchant, the heels of another, the box toe and stiffenings of another, and so on. In the United States there are many factories which do nothing but cut soles, or rather stamp them out with dies, a hundred or more in a minute. These soles and also the less [75] heavy inner soles go through machines that make all parts of them of a uniform thickness. The traveling shoemaker always hammered his sole leather to make it wear better ”

“ Put them on a table with a top of wire netting covered with brown paper, and keep them comfortably warm. In a week or two, there will appear some little worms about an eighth of an inch long and covered with black hairs. These tiny worms have to become three inches or more in length, and they are expected to accomplish the feat in about a month. If a boy four feet tall should grow at the silkworm's rate for one month, he would become forty-eight feet tall. It is no wonder that the worms have to make a business of eating, or that the keeper has to make a business of providing them with food. ”