If any of our readers are in the habit of passing a contractor’s or
town’s yard, he will, perhaps, remember perceiving, alongside the outer
walls, a busy scene going on, which he cannot exactly make out. A crowd
of women toiling and moiling amid heaps of rubbish, two or three barges
laden with vegetable refuse, he can distinguish plainly enough; but it
is not until he sees a string of dustcarts slowly wending their way
towards the distant wharf, that the thought flashes upon his mind that
the busy human ants he has been watching are scavengers, sorting and
arranging the refuse of the great towns and cities. There is nothing
particularly attractive in a scavenger’s yard: neither the sights nor
the smells are pleasant; nevertheless, the scene that here meets his
eye, repellent as it is, could not exist in any other than a high state
of civilisation. When we think of it, the dustbin is the tomb of the
householder; it is the grave into which all our domestic surroundings
inevitably sink. Of old, in the ruder states of society, this dust
and refuse found its final rest in mother earth; but with us, its
removal by the scavenger is only the first stage of its elevation to
a higher existence, if we may so speak. In detail, as it exists in
every household, it is a nuisance to be got rid of; in the aggregate,
it becomes a valuable commodity, to be re-imported into our arts and
manufactures.
As the great lumbering carts arrive in a dust-contractor’s yard, their
contents are emptied into isolated heaps. No sooner does this take
place, than they are each in detail attacked by grimy men, who remove
all the larger articles, such as vegetable matter, old coal-scuttles,
old crinolines—or rather crinolettes—old hats, and old garments. This
is a kind of rough sifting which prepares the heap for the attacks
of the women, who instantly settle upon every heap like a flock of
crows that may happen to spy any carrion in a field. Each woman as
she settles upon the heap comes sieve in hand, and spreads around her
a number of baskets; the man now fills the sieve, and the process of
separating the dustheap into its elements begins. The first few shakes
of the sieve throw down all the fine ashes and the coal-dust. This
detritus becomes a very valuable commodity when collected and put to
its right use. It is used by brickmakers to mix with the clay, and does
its part in the ultimate baking of the brick. In the neighbourhood
of most of our railways, our readers may have noticed vast heaps of
fine black dust burning with a slow combustion and with much smoke.
These heaps consist of bricks which are being baked. They are placed
in rows a little apart, and their interstices are filled with the
fine ‘breeze,’ as the coal-ashes are termed; a light is set below,
and gradually the whole mass fires to a dull red heat, the ‘breeze’
intimately mixed with the clay helping to bake the inside of the
brick in the most perfect manner without vitrifying it. The ‘breeze’
is the most valuable portion of the dust, and it rises or falls in
value according to the amount of building going on and to the rate of
its production; in the summer, but little, comparatively, is made.
Coal-dust, it must be remembered, is entirely a distinct refuse from
road-dust, which also possesses a certain value, as we shall show
by-and-by. When all the finer refuse has passed through the sieve, the
larger and coarser articles remain upon the top. There glisten some
pieces of broken glass; this, of course, only requires to be remelted
to be put once more into circulation in the world. Considering the
brittle nature of this material and the enormous quantities of it
employed, it is fortunate that it is almost indestructible. When we
break a window, we only alter the arrangement of its particles. Broken
into a thousand pieces, it remains as good glass as ever; time will not
touch it. The remnants of glass that are found among the Roman remains
that have been lying in the ground for two thousand years, are as fit
for the glass-pot as though it had been made yesterday; phials and old
bottles are rarely even chipped, hence they are merely washed, and they
pass again into the drawers of the chemist or apothecary.
Bones form another constant contribution to the sieve, and a valuable
item they are to the dust contractor. There is a grand tussle going on
for their possession both by the manufacturer and agriculturist. The
larger bones are first boiled, in order to extract all their fat and
gelatine. The purposes the former article is put to are too numerous
to be mentioned; a good deal of the finer kind goes to make pomatum
and soap; the gelatine is, we do not doubt, used as the basis of
soups; and we know that it is employed in the manufacture of jujube
lozenges. The smaller bones, which cannot be used in the constructive
arts, are equally valuable in agriculture. When ground down to a
fine powder and mixed with sulphuric acid, they become that great
fertiliser, superphosphate of lime, restoring to the soil all the
productive qualities that have been taken out of it by over-cropping.
Wheat-growing is very exhaustive to the soil; indeed, we could not
go on growing wheat for many years without reducing it to sterility,
were it not for the use of this superphosphate. Phosphorus, again, is
another extractive from bones.
Old iron finds its way into a very spacious sieve. Like the glass, its
substance is difficult to destroy; indeed, some old iron is rendered
much more valuable by being knocked about. Thus, old iron in the form
of horseshoes, and horseshoe nails, fetches a much higher price than
the original metal from which they were made; the toughness it acquires
by constant blows and concussions gives it a greatly enhanced value
in the market. Old tinned articles, such as slop-pails and saucepans,
are first heated, to recover their tin and the solder with which they
are made, both of which articles are more valuable than the old iron.
Paper is carefully collected, and goes once again to the paper-mills.
Like glass, the original fibre is very indestructible; for all we know,
the note-paper on which we indite the tenderest love-letters to our
beloved was made from an old account-book of a tallow-chandler, or from
the musty records of the past centuries. In turning over the ragman’s
basket, what a singular history we have! The ball-dress of a lady drops
into a rag-basket and reappears as a billet-doux; disappears again to
reappear once more in the drawing-room or the nursery as a workbox of
papier-mâché, or a doll, or even into the wheels of railway trucks, and
other uses to which paper is now put.
Whilst, however, we are watching the sifters grubbing over the heaps—as
we have said, like so many crows—they all rise together, as we
sometimes see these birds do, without any apparent cause, and make off
to the nearest public-house. But there is a cause, we may be sure, for
this sudden flight. If you ask the overlooker, he speedily enlightens
you. ‘Oh, they’ve been and found some money in the dustheap, and when
they do, it is a rule among them to share it together in drink.’
By-and-by, their little jollification over, they return. If there is
anything that can be used as food in the dust, the ‘hill-women’ are
entitled to it as a perquisite. In this manner they obtain many pieces
of bread which the reader might not like to eat, but which they either
do not object to, or put to other uses.
All the pieces of wood are also considered to be theirs; and when they
leave work, they may be seen laden with fuel of this kind, which saves
them more expensive firing. The broken china and crockery goes to make
the foundations of roads and paths; and all the ‘soft core’—namely,
refuse vegetable matter—is returned directly to the fields in the
shape of manure. Old clothes are not the least valuable items of the
dustyard. Anything in the shape of cotton, even to the covering of
the crinoline steels and stay-bones, is put aside for the paper-mill.
Cloth finds its way to the shoddy-mills of Lancashire, where it is
purified and ground down and remade into coarse cloth. The old woollen
garments that are turned thus into shoddy are equal to a contribution
of twenty-five thousand tons of wool. Yet these old clothes, not many
years ago, were considered of no more value than to be thrown upon
the manure-heap, there slowly to suffer disintegration until fit to
be placed upon the land. Indeed, there is a class of rags which is
now taken directly to the soil. Old house and dish cloths soaked with
grease and animal refuse make capital manure. In the dust-contractors’
yards we may see them spread upon the ground to dry, preparatory to
their being forwarded to the hop-grounds, where they are much used
for the cultivation of that plant. Old boots and shoes, if not too
much dilapidated, find their way to the back slums of the town, where
a class of tradesmen live who patch them up, and, by the aid of
heel-ball, make them once more presentable.
We had almost forgotten to say that no inconsiderable amount of coal
is rescued from the dustheap. This, of course, does not go to the
brickyard; it is purchased by the poor. In well-to-do neighbourhoods,
and especially in the fashionable quarter of the town, the ashes are
rarely sifted; hence, pieces of coal half-burnt, or small lumps, are
thrown away every morning. This extravagance makes the ‘dust’ of the
better portions of the town far more valuable than that collected from
the poverty-stricken districts. Indeed, the dust in the aristocratic
portion of the town is richer in every valuable refuse—there are more
bones, more ‘breeze,’ more refuse clothing, than ever find a chance of
getting into the boxes and middens of the poor quarter.
We have said that the dust from the roads is kept distinct from
the dust of the ashpit. Road-dust is always very rich in manure,
which makes it valuable as a top-dressing for meadows. It is also
largely used to mix with soft clay for the making of inferior bricks,
and we have ascertained that it is also used for a more unsightly
adulteration. The composition with which many of the cheaply run-up
houses are smoothed over and made to appear ornamental, is very freely
mixed with road-dust. The evil of this we speedily see in the green
stains with which all such structures are disfigured, such green stains
being nothing more than a vegetation that occurs in all damp spots, and
finds its support in this surreptitious dust.
Thus the grimy scavenger and ‘hill-women’ perform a valuable part in
the world. By their aid we return to the exhausted fields the riches
the towns have drawn from them; and they arrest from speedy destruction
a score of valuable products, and set them once more in circulation in
the busy world.