Money in Waste.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 28 March 1890, Page 3

Money in Waste.

A New York correspondent of one of oar contemporaries supplies the following wiggestive facts:— Yon often hear of money being picked up in the streets, but the city has had a streak of luck, such as does not often fall to its share, xt costs us over a million to clean our streets. The dirt is (gathered by the street cleaning department, and is dumped into large scows at the river side : is then towed out to sea, and there dumped into the ocean. A few years ago an army of Italians used to swarm about these scows picking up refuse rags, bones, and whatever else they could find. Then an enterprising Italian made the city an offer of seven hundred dollars for the evclusive privilege of overhauling the street sweepings and ashes. His first year made him a man of independent fortune. Then some of his countrymen who had discovered his secret bid against him when the city put up the contract the following year, and the city realised five thousand dollars. Next year another bid ten thousand. Last year it rose (to eighty thousand dollars, and for 1890 the city secures eighty-five thousand dollars, and the contractor has to employ a hundred men at a dollarja day to pick out the refuse that he wants to save.