“EVERLASTING MATCH”

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 13557, 15 September 1944, Page 3

“EVERLASTING MATCH”

HUNGARIAN’S INVENTION DISAPPEARED FROM THE SCENE Some years before the war'an enterprising young Hungarian invented a match which could be struck and used again and again, iperhaps a hundred times. But before it could become popular it disappeared from the scene. There had been other inventions of the kind, but all" vanished into thin air—all ended in smoke. Now the “everlasting match” has cropped up again in the news. The United States has a powerful antiTrust law, designed to check privilege and monopoly in commodities needed by the mass of the people, and under this law the American Government is taking action against the “match cartel,” the combine of great firms interested in match manufacture throughout the world. The U.S. court, of course, can proceed against only its own match firms, and the representatives of foreign match firms located in the United States. Among the strong arguments which enabled the anti-Trus*t law to be passed was that these cartels, having once sunk vast sums of money in machinery and ’ organisation, were bound in self-defence to obstruct any new invention or development which would put their own manufacture out of date. 'ln the present case the match “ring” is accused of buying up and suppressing all “everlasting match” inventions.