this country! If by any sudden convulsion our supply of cotton from America should be cut off, how widespread would be the resulting destitution and ruin to many of our merchants and importers, and to a large class of the population in the manufacturing districts. And yet we have every facility of soil and climate for producing, in our own dependencies of Africa, India, and Australia, more than sufficient for our wants.* Among the incentive rewards offered by the Council of the Society of Arts, at the present time, are premiums— For an account of the means at present employed in the utilization of so-called "Refuse Products" generally. For an economical method of rendering the refuse from Scrolls, in making Size, and the waste alkali and filth extracted from Rags in process of boiling, available, each separately, as a Manure. For the introduction, commercially, of a supply of Hair, for manufacturing purposes, obtained from animals not hitherto resorted to, such as the Musk Ox, &c. For the largest and best sample of Starch, produced from a non-edible substance, as cheap as any at present in use, and obtainable in large quantities. COLLECTORS OF, AND DEALERS IN, WASTE In most large cities there is a class of poor persons who make their livelihood by collecting the offal of the houses, and disposing of it for the purposes of different manufactures. Nowhere is this class so developed as in Paris, where the chiffonnier forms a peculiar type, almost unknown elsewhere. It is more * Since these remarks were originally made the state of things thus hinted at has actually come to pass. than probable that the reader has never thought of what becomes of the different objects which such persons are seen collecting. Year after year we buy clothes of wool or cotton; we wear them out to a certain point; they then pass into other hands; what becomes of them after? They are not annihilated; they may change their forms; but, nevertheless, the elements of which they are composed do not cease to exist. Let us examine the ragman's basket: what do we turn up first? We have pieces of cotton and linen rags, the raw material of the paper-maker, who transforms these unsightly objects probably into the most delicately-scented note-paper. Here, again, we have pieces of paper of all kinds-what can they be for? They form materials for making paste-board, dolls' heads, and occasionally papier mâché. What a singular history we have here! The ball-dress of a lady drops into the rag-basket, and reappears as a billet-doux; disappears again, to reappear once more in the drawing-room or the nursery, as a workbox or a doll. Returning to the basket again, we find pieces of woollen cloths of different colours,-what use can we put them to, as they do not make paper? The bits of scarlet cloth, which are dyed with cochineal, are boiled in soda to extract the colouring matter, which is used in dyeing chessmen, billiard-balls, and other things. Or we may sort the bits of cloth of different colours, and prepare from them materials for making flock-papers for rooms, or we might make roofing-felt of them. From the bones rejected from our dinner-tables are made knife-handles, buttons, and a thousand other articles of a similar character; or we may obtain oil from them, on the one hand, from which soap is made; and, on the other, glue, or the most transparent gelatine, from which ornaments may be made or visiting cards the residue being burned to make ivory-black for the manufacture of blacking, or phosphorus for the manufacture of lucifer matches. Or we may use it for manure; or as an element in the manufacture of earthenware; and, finally, we may distil the whole bone, and get an ivory-black fit for making sugar white, whilst another substance is at the same time obtained, from which smelling-salts are made. Thus the bones thrown to the dogs in this utilitarian age may come back to us again on our dinner-table, as a part of our dress, as the medium of our politeness, as a means of washing our hands, lighting our fires, and blacking our boots; and, finally, as the contents of that all-important article, a lady's smelling-bottle! : Could the reader have supposed that a ragman's basket supplied the materials for so many manufactures? And yet so it is modern chemistry has taught us how, out of the most vile and apparently the most worthless rubbish, the most useful and frequently the most beautiful things may be elaborated.* Rags are the common emblem of poverty, and to say that a man is in a ragged condition is the worst thing that can be said of him; but rags are, in fact, a great source of wealth, and one of the staples of our commerce; for, besides our large home collection, we * Dublin Exhibition Report. import cotton and linen rags on the average of years of the value of more than £300,000 sterling; and the whole quantity used in the kingdom exceeds one million sterling. During the war with Russia, there was an enormous demand for linen rags by the apothecaries to scrape into lint. Unless persons, then, have carefully examined the vast amount of the cost of rags, they can form no idea of their great importance. Our imports of " rags and other materials for making paper" (exclusive of woollen rags), in the last have been as follows:years, few The itinerant clothesmen of the metropolis are pretty numerous, although I have no precise account of their numbers. In conjunction with the china and glass pedlars, and the vendors of growing plants and flowers, they collect worn-out garments, hats, boots and shoes, &c., which are renovated and made "better than new," either for home sale in Holywell-street, the Minories, and the neighbourhood of the Tower, Monmouth-street, and such localities. Then there are the wardrobe purchasers, whose advertisements are seen continually in the Times, requiring garments for export. These classes furnish a considerable portion of the "apparel and slops," to the value of more than £2,000,000 sterling, annually exported, half of which goes to Australia. The extent of this waste-material trade, if I may so term it, may be estimated by the number of persons engaged in it in London, as gleaned from the pages of the Post-Office Directory. This number, however, is necessarily far below the mark, for it only includes housekeepers, and many in the suburbs are omitted. There are, I find, 354 clothes salesmen (these, perhaps, are not all vendors of old clothes, but include some of the outfitters), an undefined number of wardrobe dealers, 160 rag merchants, 564 marine store dealers, nineteen bone dealers (ten of whom are bone boilers), and three bone crushers. Mr. Mayhew gives the following estimate of the vendors of second-hand articles in the streets of London alone : |