The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1893-11-02
a CITY'S WASTE.
It Gives a Living to Hundreds of Poor
People.

| while the city still SUM DerS, ana De-
! fore the cmlssaries of the garbage con-
tractors are abroad. there goes forth
from that part of the city known as
Little Italy" small army of Italians,
whose daily bread is wrung from the
refuse that another condition of society
has declared unfit for further use.
Day after day this horde, each men,
Der provided with push-cart, sack
and bucket, spreads itself like huge
octopus over the city, quietly sapping
an existence from the cast-off and otfaL.
They are the pickers, the scavengers,
who in the early morning and forenoon
can be seen on the street incumbered
by large sack stopping here and
| there to examine the contents of the
family slop box and cleaning there
| from the bones, rags, old shoes. old
hats, rubbers, bottles, paper, or what
ever else that can in any shape be used
| again. Slowly he trudges along from
| box to barrel until the sack is filed,
| when he returns to the cart, which has
been left with others in some back
| street. where the bag is emptied to
make ready for another tour of the
neighboring street. After several of
these trips the cart is loaded and he
| starts for home
This usually happens abont IL o'clock,
and though he has beer up since 4
a. m, his work is by no no 7ans finished.
He must now sort out tac iilthy mass,
clean and dry the rags, scrape the
| tainted meat from the bones, wash the
4. -. N1l h,.t I'D
shoes, if ne has been fortunate to find
any, and. like any other merchant, put
his goods into a salable shape.
This done, the stock is again loaded
and he starts for the rag dealer, who
| gives him two cents per pound for his
white rags and one and half for his
| 'miXed."
For the bones he receives half cent
per pound and for the bottles twenty
five cents to one dollar per hundred,
| according to size. He next goes to the
secondhand" man, WHO will give five
cents for an old shoe or ten cents for
| hat, and so on until the whole is dis
posed of.
When this is accomplished "Gui-
seppi" has put in about eighteen hours
of solid labor. and if he had had.a good
day he has about seventy-fivc cents as
n reward for his trouble. though it is
oftener fifty cents and not infrequently
! twenty-five or thirty cents OF this
| amount part goes for the household eN-
penscs, and always some of it to an
Italian savings bank. The poor pay he
receives for his efforts is not the only
thing he has to mar his earthly happi-
ness; there are times when material is
hard to get. as at present. when SO
many laborers are out of work, NUM-
bars of them having joined the army of
cart pushers in t;.eir daily scramble for
Stop.
| Again, on account of the closing of
large mills all over the country, the
demand for rags and paper has been
greatly diminished, and where the
dealers do not refuse to buy the rags
at all the prices have been so reduced
as to make poor Guiseppi at times des-
perate.
The abode of the picker is as humble
| as his calling. and is almost invariab bly,
| found in some obscure, dirty, foul
smelling courts leading off one. of the
small back streets, where in the narrow
precincts of a three-room house he
keeps his already large and ever
| increasing family, whose only llnowl-
edge of the great city around them is
| CLEANED from the dirty pack he brings
| in each day. The children. as a rule,
are fat and healthy, although it is diff
cult to understand how any human be-
ing can exist in the filth and soualor
| that form the chief characteristic Of
his home, and they impatiently wait
| for the return of the father. who is
sure to bring some trinlset or toy that
has been discarded by some more for
tunate little one and consigned to the
| garbage box. The court in which the
! picker lives usually contains besides
the dwelling houses a rag-buyer's shop
where the rags and other offal are
stored, accommodating for weeks before
shipment and sending out the most dis
| gushing odors sickening to stranger,
but which has long ceased to annoy
occupants of the court. 1t is hard 10
to realize that the filth here collected
can ever be of use other than for en-
riching the soil, yet the white rags are
sent to the paper-maker, who returns
them to us neatly packed in boxes the
delicate writing paper of commences;
the colored rags go to the shoddy dealer
who spins them into the shoddy that
enters so largely into our "all-wool."
| But the bones, fertilizer sure-no,
not all of them, the sugar refiner buys
some of them. and after carefully boil
ing, bleaching and grinding them uses
them to turn brown sugar into white.
Old paper is used for making binders
board, and old rubbers, like the iron,
are melted over, and used for the same
purpose indefinitely.
The picker isunprogressivea as n rule,
and sticks to his push-cart until he
makes money enough to go back to
sunny Italy, or grows old in the busi-
ness, and is cared for by his children.
However, this rule has its exceptions;
in some cases the push-cart is succeeded
by horse and wagon, or else he takes
a store and becomes dealer his former
experiences making him very cute
buyer.
4 81 l.