The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1865-03-08
Old Clothes and what Becomes Of Than.

Black cloth clothes that are too far gone to
be "clobbered" and revived" are always sent
abroad to be cut up to make caps. France
takes the best of these old clothes for this pur-
pose. The Innings are stripped out, and in
this condition they are admitted duty free as
old rags. Russia and Poland, where caps
seem 10 be universally worn by the working
population, are content with still more thread
bare garments to be cut up for this purpose.
The great bulk OF our cast-off clothes of all
kinds, however, find their way to two mar
kets-Ireland and Holland. The Old clothes
bags of the collectors may, in fact, be said to
be emptied out in the land OF Erin, as far as
the ordinary order of clothes go, while to Hol-
land only special articles OF apparel are ex-
ported. Singular enough, the destination Of
the red tnnics OF the whole British infantry Is
the chests of the study Dutchman. The
sleeves are cut off, and they are made to but
ton In doube-breasted fashion, thus remod-
elled, they are worn next to the skin like a
flannel waistcoat by all careful Dutchnen
among the laboring classes. The Irish chiefly
favor corduroys, and we suspect the worn. ont
legs of British pantaloons' of this material are
cut off and converted into breeches for Pat
Our readers will perhaps have noticed the spe-
cal aVldity the dealers in old clothes eyinces
LOT ali klnds Of regimentals, full dress liveries,
volunteers uniforms, beadles. coats etc. One
Of the largest dealers In london in these
snowy dresses once said 20 us. seeing a pnard-
man going along the street, IA thonssnJ ~
one that coat comes into my handsn A Iowa
mayors footmans full dress livery is viewaJ
by these gentry with wolAsh eyes. These are
the great prizes of the profession-and tba;,.
barbaric splendors are destined for a snec;aI
market-the South Coast of Africa. We ,,.' onr'
selves saw an assortment of wel-preservsd
liveries of the heir to the proudest throne in
the world, Just being packed for expectation
. to the grand destination OF all fine liveries we
have just mentioned. IS @
1t should be some solace to the parish beadle
that his clothes, instead of descending in the
social scale like those of the ordinary civilians,
are destined to flame upon the back of some
autocrat who holds the lives of thousands OF
men at his disposal, instead of only being the
embems of terror to poor parish boys. The
vast majority of the scarlet coats of our Off
GERS that are little worn find their way to
the great annual fair at Leipsic. There is
belief in the trade that the destination Of this
scarlet cloth is the cuffs and facings of the
civil officials of the Russian government
However this may be, the fact of second hand
regimeutals finding their way to the great
German fair is Hndoubted. The pepper and
salt greatcoats OF cur infantry go to our agri-
cultural districts and to the Cape, but the
heavier and more valuable artillery cloaks
find their way to Holland; and that country
and Ireland absorb between them the cast-of1
clothes Of the police. There is one odd item
Of clothes that has a singular history. There