WASTE IN NEW YORK. A Large Body of the People Supported on What is Thrown Away.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 376, 12 June 1889, Page 6

WASTE IN NEW YORK. A Large Body of the People Supported on What is Thrown Away.

It is often said that nothing goes to waste in New York. If this be true it is not because thei-e are no wasteful people there. Enough stuff of more or less value is thrown into the ash barrels of the city daily to support a horde of not over-particular people, who rake the refuse over diligently and sort out every fragment of bone, wood, rag and glass, all of which have a fixed commercial value, and are readily turned into a little money. But this is the mere humdrum part of the work. A feature of excitement is lent to it by the ir,equent finding of coins, bric-a-brac, jewellery, bank notes, silverware and almost every conceivable household chattel of small size that is readily lost by careless owners or lazy servants. That this sort of thing mounts up to a respectable sum every day is proved by a visit to the dumping docks of the Street Cleaning Department. There are a number of these dumps at the water's edge, to which the city ash carts come and shoot their loads down into the waiting scows. In order to make the scows carry as much as possible, the refuse is piled evenly all over the boat, ' trimmed ' is the technical phrase, and the trimmers are the poorer class of Italians, who get $1 a day for their disagreeable work. These men do the sorting and finding of anything valuable that has been thrown out with the ashes. They hand it all over to their padrones, who have bid for the privilege of trimming the scows. As they pay the city about $1,000 a week for this privilege, and pay their men about $1,000 more in wages, and as the competition in the bidding for the privilege is always brisk, it can be easily seen that in order to leave the padrones any profit, the kind people of New York must continue to waste a good deal of their substance every day.

The new dissipation invented by tbe women of London and Paris is the smoking of tea cigarettes. Special grades of the finest tea are used, and the effect of the cigarette is said to be delightful for fully an hour alter one has been smoked After that comes a reaction in the form of nervous trembling and excitability, which is best endured, according to a woman of title who rather goes in for all these things, by drinking a thimbleful of frozen absinthe. The " Sydney Mail " prints the following paragraph : — A large quantity of butter is being shipped at present from" Taranaki to London, owing to the collapse of the Sydney market. About 1,500 eggs, it is said, will go Home by the Ruapehu. In Paris the finest butter, that with the delicate butter-cup and dairy bouquet, the nutty taste, and the bon-bon meltingness in the mouth, commands 3s per lb. There is then a sufficient margin left, despite duties, to send supplies even to France. If it pays to soil Australian butter at Is per lb in London, there i 3 ample profit left to ship to Paris and net 2s 3d per lb.

They bid me laugh, and with mirthsomc wiles And the laughing jests of the free and gay, They seek to call to my face the smiles, They mock the joy that i& far away. They bid me sing with the merry crowd, But the mocking chorus goes on and on— How can I laugh when the heart is bowed, And the back suspender button gone ? Conversation is a very serious thing with some people. One of this kind in a train was asked a Aery simple question by a fellow passenger. She made a deprecating gesture and replied: "Excuse me, but! am only going, to the next station, and it's not worth! while to begin a conversation." Professor Mommsen, the famous G.erman historian, speaking of, the Samoan trouble, says: "It is a dispute unworthy of 'men. For my part, I would' nob give a glass of Bavarian beer for all the islands in tlr I Pacific Ocean."