RAGS FOR AMERICA.

Mt Benger Mail, Volume 17, Issue 858, 2 October 1896, Page 4

RAGS FOR AMERICA.

Mr M. Carmichael, British Vice-Consul at Leghorn, in the course of an interesting report, says that Leghorn, which at one time was pre-eminent among Italian ports in almost every branch of trade, still retains her ancient pre-eminence in several branches, and in none more so, perhaps, than in the trade in rags. Practically the whole rag trade of the Peninsula centres in this city, and that apparently for no other reason than the fact that traditions die hard in Italy. Leghorn was one of the first cities in Europe where rag-picking was instituted on a great scale, and it is not -easy, without good reasons, to transplant or diminish the importance of a market that has for centuries held an unique and'-unrivalled position. There are some 500 women and girls and about fifty men and boys engaged in the ragpicking industry in Leghorn. Their work is all done on the premises of the great establishments. About half a dozen girls stand round square tables piled with a miscellany of rags, and surrounded by a considerable number of deep, narrow baskets, into which they cast their assortments with wonderful dexterity and rapidity. A rag warehouse has two main divisions, the stacks of mixed and unpicked rags waiting for assortment, and the stacks of carefullyassorted rags waiting to be pressed into large bales for shipment. The rags are piled high from floor to ceiling, passages being left by which access can be had to the different assortments, and it is a somewhat curious sensation to walk along these narrow ravines banked by huge perpendicular piles of hempen cordage, old and new mungo, and white or colored vegetable rags.

SOURCES OK SUPPLY. The rag - pickiDg establishments secure their supplies from the small rag shops all over the kingdom, which in turn either send out itinerant buyers of their own or purchase from independant itinerary collectors. The naturally thrifty disposition of the Tuscan lower orders, their habit of finding a use for odds and ends of every description, and their love of hard bargaining, conduce to a large retail business in rags. Most of the people sell to the itinerant col lectors or " cenciai," but those who can afford to wait carry their accumulations to the rag shops, from whom they receive a better price, or, if they have collected a really considerable quantity, even direct to the rag-picking establishments, where they have a still more remunerative sale. The usual price paid is from 100 to loc a kilo., according to quality, but in the palmy days of the rag trade, before esparto and woodpulp came to be used in the manufacture of paper, as much as three times this figure was paid for old rags. Indeed, in the wholesale market rags have, for the same reason, only half the commercial value they enjoyed thirty years ago. By far the greater part of the rags which leave Leghorn go to the United States, which is the principal foreign market for Ttali&n raqa. Even the rags which local statistics show as exported to the United Kingdom are in great measure only sent for transhipment thence to the United States. Great Britain, as a matter of fact, is scarcely so good a customer as Spain, and it would seem at first sight somewhat curious that a country which produces so enormous a quantity of paper should draw so small a supply of rags from Italy. The real reason of the large business with America would seem to be that the paper manufacturers of the United States are sufficiently enterprising to go direct to the Italian rag merchants without the intervention of middlemen, either American or Italian, thus securing the goods they require on the most favorable possible terms to themselves. This direct relation does not appear to exist between the English paper manufacturer and the foreign rag merchant, at least in Italy, for the usual English importers of vegetable rags seem hitherto, for no easily assignable reason, to have neglected the Italian market. The writer of the able article ' Paper' in the last edition of 'Chambers's Encyclopedia,' after pointing out that the Bupply of esparto grass must necessarily fail, and that wood-pulp without rags is useless in the manufacture of paper, asks with a view to future contingencies: " How much longer will Belgium, France, and Germany be disposed to part with their rags ?" He makes no mention of Italy, which is ready enough to part with her supplies of this article, and it is well that buyers in England should be made aware of the large and varied stocks that exist in Leghorn, where they will find not only quantity, but all their requirements as to quality. English paper manufacturers, too, would find a certain advantage in putting themselves into direct communication with Leghorn rag merchants, not only on account of the saving in price, but because of the experience they have acquired in their ralations with America in manufacturers' requirements. It would certainly seem as if a market so much prized by the United States should not be neglected by Great Britain. At all events, it may prove a source of supply when supplies fail elsewhere.

ANIMAL RAtiS. As with vegetable rags, so Italian animal rags do not seem to be in great demand in the United Kingdom. Merchants sometimes send bales of these goods to the great shoddy market of Dewsbury to be put up at the rag auctions there, but they object to this cours6 on acconnt of the great uncertainty of the results. There is an export duty on Italian rags, animal and vegetable, of 8.80 lire per quintal, or nearly 90 lire per English ton, but this, owing to a convenient fiction permitted by the fiscal authorities, does not seriously hamper the trade.