New-York tribune., 1903-07-12
NEW JUNK LAW A CHECK ON BOY THIEVES.
Continued from first page.

obedience limps an old horse harnessed to the
shafts of rickety wagon.
How can the fellow earn living?" one asks
himself, as he watches man. horse and wagon
slowly travel down the street This type of
junk man certainly has no outward evidences of
prosperity
This stoop shouldered individual is the col
lector." as he is euphoniously called, who buys
at retail and sells at wholesale, exactly contrary
to the ordinary rules Of commerce. The "col-
lector'' turns over his gleanings to the "big
junk man. who sorts the nondescript heap into
various grades breaks up the huge masses or
metal into convenient sizes for handling, and
then sells his product to the manufacturer
Rags and old paper are collected and handled
in much the same way. The retail man collects
them the wholesale dealer sorts them, and the
manufacturer buys and utilizes them.
New methods by which much that used to be
regarded as worthless can be made val
liable are increasing constantly, but with these
the Junk man is not concerned. He is only the
middeman. 1t is calling that requires some
knowledge Of nearly every branch OF manu-
featuring industry. A ragged coat may enter
the weave of a carpet Of artistic design and
hue. old rubber boots may become parts of the
tires of an automobile, while the metal in
rusty, broken stove may be put to any one Of
thousand
Because iron is the most useful as we'll as the
most common metal, it finally finds its way to
the 1unl1man's yard in quantities which exceed
both in bulk and value all other metals COM
bined The largest sale of iron recently recorded
was at Charleston, where the Navy Department
disposed of the accumulation of several years
at the navy yard and no fewer than 20 dealers
put in bids. An old iron ship. however unsea-
worthy is still valuable. The junkman who
buys it sets it afire and gets rid Of the useless
wood He does the same thing with old railroad
cars. On what remains from the fames gangs
Of men set to work with hammers and wrenches
tear the machinery into its various parts
and then sort them into various grades of iron
or steel The large castings are then broken
into bits by means of the fall" a machine
which smashes the junk by lifting a heavy
mass of steel like great cannon ball and let
ting 1t drop the metal beneath Iron pipes
and small beams are fed into a gigantic shears
that clips them into lengths about two feet long
as easily as a dressmaker ships off the ends of
her basting thread,
There is nothing in the shape of iron too huge
for the ambition of the junkman. After the
great fire at the Chicago Worlds Fair junk
dealers grappled with the tangled masses of
iron which remained Of the once proud build
ings and gradually reduced these mountains
of metal to neat piles of what looked to be cord
wood.
However pauperized the man with the stoop
shoulders may seem to be- there are fortunes to
be made in buying and selling junk. This is
only Illustration: Thirty-seven years ago
| there landed at Castle Garden a young Irshman.
neither afraid nor ashamed of any work how
ever hard or humble. Without a cent of capital
he founded what is now the largest junk busi-
ness in the country, handling thousands of tons
of old metals and rags each year. Starting with
bag on his back in which he slowed the rags
he bought from house to house. he now employs
two hundred men, has branch yards in several