The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1894-06-27
A GREAT CITY'S REFUSE.
DIsPoSING OF NEW YoRK'S NOUN
TAINs OF RUBBISH.

Curious Flnds-Seventeen Dump
ing Places Along the River Fronts.
HHE old shoes and hats and
banana peels, upon which
even the wicked are bound to
fall, the broken glass and
rags, and all the rest of the rubbish
which litters the streets, all the monde
script and multitudinous things which
the people of Manhattan Island have
thrown away, and which the junkmen
have missed-where do they go?
There are seventeen dumping places
on the two river fronts of New York,
where, among other less romantic ref
use, are deposited the slippers which
soubrettes and other people have out
worn; love letters and bills
which never will be paid, and which
are tumbled into the capacious insides
of big scows, along with bits of boxes
and bands of barrels from commercial
neighborhoods downtown and the dis
carded bottles from flats uptown, and
are shoveled and raked over and then
go on sea voyage from which they
never come back.
The shovels are continually at work,
and q whole army of men is busy
pretending to earn its share of the
great fat appropriation which the tax
payers OF New York are forced to fork
over yearly.
There is the force in the main Office
of the department in the Court Build
ing in Centre street-clerks of this
and clerks of that. Then there are
great stables in different parts of the
city, stables where hundreds of horses
rest. There are blacksmith shops,
paint shops, and men in pyramids to
do the work in them. Then there are
inspectors of one thing and another at
all stages of the game.
At each of the seventeen dumping
places along shore there is always
force of inspectors and timekeepers Mt
all hours of day and night keeping
tab on the number of loads and on the
men who bring them.
The scows are all reloaded as soon
as they come back from their journey
to sea. The tugboats which tow the
dusty burdens out on every tide only
wait long enough in port to get coal
up and have change of crews made
Then on the next tide of they go to
sea again, trailing at the end of long
hawsers cargoes of the city's dirt.
Aboard the garbage scows you will
always see six or eight men at work.
Great binding clouds of dirt are
around them such as would smother
an ordinary citizen, but they don't
mind it. With huge forks they claw
and shovel and dig away, dragging
out from heaps everything that can
go to the ragpickers and bring penny
back.
These sorters of garbage are Italians,
and are part and parcel of the great
padrone contract system. The city
gets, it is said, from the bosses, $780,
900 or $50, 900 a year for the privilege
of soIting the stuff, and under the
dumps on all the piers are great dark
cavernous recesses where ash-covered
men and women and children sort
over whatever the fellows with their
picks have weeded out.
A World reporter went the other
night on the Mutual, one of the
rattlety bang old tugboats which tow
the garbage dumps down the bay.
Tucked under the cushions in the
pilot-house-the library of the craft
was a book which had been plucked
from the ash-heap--a pretty book,
with blue binding with gilt lettering,
O gift book, with the name of we'll
known society young woman written
on its title page. The lady had tired
of it, seemingly, and with its story it
had gone through all those hands and
all that dirt to furnish a pastime
for the patient crew of the Mutual
in their idle hours.
And all those curiosities and family
secrets travel under a strenuous deal
of system. There is not a stage that
garbage goes through which is not
governed by regulation. From
the time that your servant rolls the
barrel to the curbstone there is fine
or imprisonment or a penalty of some
sort attached to any mishandling OF
its contents. There is documentary
report to be made, too, showing that
these requirements have been fulfilled.
Tab is kept on every barrel of ashes.
So accurate is the system that a care.
full detective might, with the data
these books and papers would furnish,
trace to its source any crime the evil
dence of which was brought to light
in the garbage dumps.
Careful scrutiny is maintained, too,
over the refuse after it leaves port.
There is a shore inspector who rides
up and down in a tugboat and watches
for strict fulfllment of the rules
about signals, about the dumping at
the proper distance outside the Hook,
to wit, nearly twenty-three miles from
the city, and about dumping at the
proper time, so that the tide shall car
ry all the garbage out TO sea instead
of back into the lower bay. The regu-
lations that tugboat captain must
bear in mind, and copies of which he
always carries with him, would make
two columns of the World. But then
it is a big city and a big task to keep
it clean.
1t is no wonder that the regulations
are many, no wonder that the work IS
such dirty one, no wonder that the
pickings of the refuse are worth so