The Portland daily press., 1862-06-24

REASON FOR AMERICA GROWING Poor
ER.-What our population are likely TO be soon
reduced to is the degree Of poverty foreshad-
owed In the following sketch from London
tract: "Ihe contents of every dust-bin in
tins vast London are carried away periodical
ly. The dustman receives small gratuity
from each householder, and when he has col
lected cartload he demands another shilling
at the gate Of the Paddington wharves, as he
deposits II within their precincts. A dust heap
Is very valuable to the contractor, and a large
one is said to be worth four or five thousand
pounds. Ii has TO be siftcd, sorted. and dis
posed Of We can give but a slight idea of its
miscellaneous contents. Its chief constituent
element is cynders, mixed with bits of coal,
from the carelessness or waste of thousands of
servants, which the searchers pick out of the
heap to be sold forthwith. The largest and
best Of the cinders also are selected for the use
of laundresses and braziers, whose purposes
they answer better than coke. The far great
er part is called breeze, because it is the por-
tion left after the wind has blown the cynder-
dust from it, through large upright iron sleeves,
held and shaken elbow high by the women who
stand In tbs heap, whilst men throw up the
stuff into the sleeves. The breeze and ashes are
also sold to the brick-makers, the ashes mixed
with the clay of the bricks, and the breeze Is
used as fuel to burn between their layers But
the heap likewise includes soft ware and hard
ware. The former includes all vegetable and
animal MATERIAL that will decompose. All
these are carried off TO be employed as manure
Stale fish and dead cats come into this list
the skins of the latter being stripped off by the
sfters, who can sell them for fourpence or six
pence, according TO their color, white being
most in request. The hard ware does not
merely mean broken pottery, though of this
there Is great abundance. Part of the pottery
is matched and mended by the women who find
1t, and becomes their perquisites the rest, with
the oyster shells, is sold to make new roads,
But hard ware in the dust heaps means rags,
which 60 to the paper-maker's; bones, which
go to the bone-boilers; old iron, brass and lead,
to statesmen Of these metals; broken glass to
old-glass shops; old carpets, old mattresses,
old boxes, old pals, old baskets, broken tea
boards, candle-sticks, tenders, old silk hand
kerchiefs, knives and salt-cellars, not forgetting
old shoes, which go in baskets to the stransla-
tors who turn old shoes into new; everything
In short that the householder has thought mot
worth mending' besides many a wastefnl addi-
tion which the masters never knew, from man.
sions where recklessness and extravaganza
bear rule. Some of the contents are the sift-
ers perquisite-a certain quantity of cinders
and as much paper and wood as they can carry,
and corks of bottles, by which alone some boast
they can find themselves in shoe leather; pill
boxes, also, and gallipots, are their lawful
property. Jewelry, silver forks and spoons
and money are occasionally found, and
too often appropriated by the finder. One
day check for a considerable sum was dis
covered among the waste paper"