The Palatka daily news. (Palatka, Fla.) 1884-1888, 1886-10-09
Tho Daily Pickings-visit to the Home
of q Noted Ragpickcr.

The Daily Pickings-visit to the Home
of . Noted Ragpickcr.
an the daily pickings," said the ragpicker,
first come the bones; we dry them, and then
sell them for 20 much pound for n1anufac-
turing common buttons and making pow
dered manure. Hair was formerly very
valuable, but since women are satisfied with
their own there is no market for it; rags Of
every color and description are carefully
picked; several years ago we used to get
much more for these, but now the market Is
flooded with them, especially since some
paper manufacturers get their rags from the
east Then glass, old bottles old iron and
the rinds and peelings Of vegetables for our
hogs and rabbits. In very hard times my
family and have eaten the meat we found
in the boxes after cleaning it carefully, but
now we give it to our cats and dogs; cooks Of
our big houses reserve the soup meats for us,
and we mix it with vegetables we raise to
make stews.
"You see those immense sacks leaning
against the wall. They are filed with crusts
of bread; my wife takes the best of them to
make bread-pap for the children, and the
others 60 toward feeding the chickens and
other animals about the house. All those
sacks are what we have picked up last winter
to use in the summer. Summer is our dull
season, because We pick in rich quarters;
most OF our people leave for the summer and
garbage boxes are empty. In quarters where
the working classes live summer is better
than winter; they never leave the city, and
in winter they burn all their garbage to add
to their fuel The commercial parts of the
city are the best Of all; one collects there all
the refuse matter of stores, beside all that Of
the tenants living in the higher stories"
A person who has never visited a rag
pickers home can have no idea of its sordid-
ness. Its stencil, its responsiveness to all the
senses. NJ. Laluisieres house is in Colonies,
a suburb situated about five miles from Paris;
it is built on a road that is lined here and
there only with ragpickers' huts. On enter
ing the gate at the front yard Of NJ Lalui-
sieres property my eye fell on a pile of
manure, on which were resting two pigs, a
dog, a cat and two of the younger children,
too thinly clad to cover their nakedness. By
the side of this was a stagnant pool ferment-
ing in the sunlight and emanating a horrible
odor waved to the surface by the motion of
two or three swimming ducks. Near by was
a nest of rabbits groveling in the mud busy
eating decayed cabbage leaves. Under an
open shed sat the three Oldest boys picking
and sorting that mornings harvest from
the garbage boxes. The odor arising from
that harvest had no resemblance whatever to
that Of new mown hay.
ventured into the house; it consists OF two
rooms; the parents bedroom has semblance
of cleanliness and decency, but the other
serves as a kitchen, dining room and bed
room for the boys, and depository Of a noun
tain of damp rags which probably have served
for all purposes in the world. Now those
five children sleep on filthy, sheetless beds
next to that mountain of offensiveness, and
there is never anything the matter with them;
they have never been ill an hour; no doctor
has ever entered that house; the boys are
hearty, strong and rosy. Perhaps we can in
fer from that that cultured children of cul-
tured families are really too well taken care
Of; that If they were less packed in cotton,
less watched in their little aflings, their pulse
less felt by the doctors, allowed to run more
loose of all the restraints of refinement and
the race would he less nervous and
suffer less from poverty Of blood. Well-to-do
French families, know, on an average have
but one and two children apiece, and they
spend their lives in killing them with care
Paris Cor. Brooklyn Eagle.