Makers of Many Things — A Reader’s Guide

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In Category - Inventions Industry

Authors: Tappan, Eva March, 1854-1930 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2009 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Manufactures; Readers Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 27,420

Reading time 120 min

Text sections 3

Makers of Many Things — A Reader’s Guide can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 27,420 words, 2 hr estimated reading time, and 3 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 23.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Manufactures,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #28569

Eva March Tappan's 1916 industrial reader traces everyday objects from raw materials to finished goods, using vivid process descriptions and a recurring focus on the skilled hands of makers. The excerpts show a structure that moves from a personal anecdote (a lost match) to step-by-step manufacture, then to the human craft behind each product.

Editorial Edition Score 4.6/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
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Produced by C. St. Charleskindt and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

THE INDUSTRIAL READERS

MAKERS OF MANY THINGS

EVA MARCH TAPPAN, PH.D.

_Author of "England's Story," "American Hero Stories," "Old World Hero Stories," "Story of the Greek People," "Story of the Roman People," etc. Editor of "The Children's Hour."_

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY EVA MARCH TAPPAN

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

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. When he has begun to apprehend the fruitfulness of the earth, both above ground and below, and the best way in which its products may be utilized and carried to the places where they are needed, he has not only acquired a knowledge of many kinds of industrial life which may help him to choose his life-work wisely from among them, but he has learned the dependence of one person upon other persons, of one part of the world upon other parts, and the necessity of peaceful intercourse. Best of all, he has learned to see. Wordsworth's familiar lines say of a man whose eyes had not been opened,--

"A primrose by a river's brim A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more."

These books are planned to show the children that there is "something more"; to broaden their horizon; to reveal to them what invention has accomplished and what wide room for invention still remains; to teach them that reward comes to the man who improves his output beyond the task of the moment; and that success is waiting, not for him who works because he must, but for him who works because he may.

Acknowledgment is due to the Diamond Match Company, Hood Rubber Company, S. D. Warren Paper Company, The Riverside Press, E. Faber, C. Howard Hunt Pen Company, Waltham Watch Company, Mark Cross Company, I. Prouty & Company, Cheney Brothers, and others, whose advice and criticism have been of most valuable aid in the preparation of this volume.

I. THE LITTLE FRICTION MATCH 1

II. ABOUT INDIA RUBBER 6

IV. HOW RAGS AND TREES BECOME PAPER 25

V. HOW BOOKS ARE MADE 36

VI. FROM GOOSE QUILLS TO FOUNTAIN PENS AND LEAD PENCILS 46

VII. THE DISHES ON OUR TABLES 56

VIII. HOW THE WHEELS OF A WATCH GO AROUND 64

IX. THE MAKING OF SHOES 73

X. IN THE COTTON MILL 82

XI. SILKWORMS AND THEIR WORK 92

THE INDUSTRIAL READERS

MAKERS OF MANY THINGS

THE LITTLE FRICTION MATCH

I remember being once upon a time ten miles from a store and one mile from a neighbor; the fire had gone out in the night, and the last match failed to blaze. We had no flint and steel. We were neither Indians nor Boy Scouts, and we did not know how to make a fire by twirling a stick. There was nothing to do but to trudge off through the snow to the neighbor a mile away and beg some matches. Then was the time when we appreciated the little match and thought with profound respect of the men who invented and perfected it.

It is a long way from the safe and reliable match of to-day back to the splinters that were soaked in chemicals and sold together with little bottles of sulphuric acid. The splinter was expected to blaze when dipped into the acid. Sometimes it did blaze, and sometimes it did not; but it was reasonably certain how the acid would behave, for it would always sputter and do its best to spoil some one's clothes. Nevertheless, even such matches as these were regarded as a wonderful convenience, and were sold at five dollars a hundred. With the next kind of match that appeared, a piece of folded sandpaper was sold, and the buyer was told to pinch it hard and draw the match through the fold. These matches were amazingly cheap--eighty-four of them for only twenty-five cents! There have been all sorts of odd matches. One kind actually had a tiny glass ball at the end full of sulphuric acid. To light this, you had to pinch the ball and the acid that was thus let out acted upon the other chemicals on the match and kindled it--or was expected to kindle it, which was not always the same thing.

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Eva March Tappan opens Makers of Many Things not with a factory floor but with a personal predicament: a fire gone out, a last match that fails, and a trudge through snow. This small crisis immediately frames the book’s central concern—the hidden labor and ingenuity behind everyday objects. The narrative then shifts to the match’s production, a pattern repeated across chapters: a relatable human moment gives way to a detailed, almost tactile account of making.

The excerpts reveal a writer attentive to physical process and the skill of workers. In the pottery chapter, Tappan lingers on the thrower’s hands—how they press, draw, and shape clay with “magical” precision. She notes that no two hand-thrown pieces are identical, and that the turner’s lathe later erases those marks to achieve uniformity. This attention to both craft and standardization runs through the book.

From Anecdote to Assembly

Tappan’s chapters typically begin with a brief, personal scene before launching into industrial process. The match chapter opens with a remembered emergency—ten miles from a store, a dead fire, no flint or steel. This is not a dry textbook start; it is a small story that makes the reader feel the weight of a failed match. Only then does the text explain how matches are made, step by step. The same structure appears in the pottery section, though the opening is less dramatic: the potter sits at his wheel, and the narrative moves from his hands to the preparation of clay. This recurring pattern—problem or image first, explanation second—gives the book a narrative rhythm that distinguishes it from a simple catalogue of processes.

The Potter’s Hands and the Machine’s Precision

The pottery chapter offers the most sustained description of manual skill in the excerpts. Tappan watches the thrower: he lifts the clay above his head, throws it onto the wheel, then shapes it with thumbs, fingers, and even a bent finger to create a lip. She emphasizes that his hands are “strong” yet “lithe and delicate,” and that every finger “does just what he wishes it to do.” Yet the chapter also acknowledges the limits of handwork. No two pieces are exactly alike, so many are passed to a turner who uses a lathe to thin walls and round edges. The turner’s work erases “all signs of hand work,” producing dishes that are “exactly like the others of the set.” Tappan thus presents a tension between individual craft and industrial uniformity, without resolving it.

Recurring Images: Sieves, Screens, and Separation

Across the excerpts, a specific image recurs: the sieving and screening of raw materials. In the match chapter, the narrative is incomplete, but the pottery section is explicit. Clay is forced through a wire sieve, then mixed with flint and feldspar ground fine at the quarry. For the finest work, it is sifted through a screen with meshes “only one one hundred and fiftieth of an inch across.” The “slip” that results is beaten and tumbled before reaching the thrower. This repeated emphasis on separation—removing coarse grains, sand, pebbles, air bubbles—suggests that Tappan sees purification as a foundational step in making. The image of material passing through ever-finer barriers becomes a quiet motif, linking disparate chapters.

Movement Between Scales: From the Quarry to the Finger

Tappan’s prose moves fluidly between large-scale industrial geography and the minute actions of a single worker. In the pottery chapter, she describes clays brought from different places, ground at the quarry, then mixed in “plungers” at the factory. But she quickly zooms in to the thrower’s finger touching the clay to create a groove. This shift in scale is characteristic: the book treats global supply chains and local craftsmanship as equally important. The preface states that the series aims to show children “the dependence of one person upon other persons, of one part of the world upon other parts.” The excerpts bear this out, but they also show that Tappan’s real fascination lies in the moment when raw material meets human touch.

Readers will find that Makers of Many Things rewards attention to its recurring structural choices: the personal opening, the detailed process, the quiet motif of sieving, and the constant shift between global and local scales. The book is best approached not as a reference work but as a series of linked essays on making, each grounded in the physical reality of materials and the skill of workers. Tappan’s own voice—curious, precise, occasionally wry—guides the reader through processes that might otherwise seem remote.

I keep thinking about how Tappan watched workers’ hands shape ordinary things, and it reminded me of something quieter—those old biographies of Italian and Spanish minds, where lives get built the same way, patiently, piece by piece. Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 1 (of 3) — Text and Context lingers like that, a gentle tracing of what hands and minds leave behind.