The Household Garbage Consumer

1896

A Boston physician has invented a vice by which all kitchen garbage may be utilized as fuel. The material is put into a dryer through which the hot air from the range circulates until all the moisture is evaporated. The receptacle then contains a quantity of refuse that is highly inflammable and will make excellent kindling, or may be thrown upon the fire and speedily burns out.

This, of course, is practicable only where people burn coal fires. In wood-stoves the heat is not of the right quality unless the fire is kept up to a raging pitch. Where gas or electricity or oil is used for heating, this way of disposing of garbage is out of the question. There are, however, enough coal-stoves used in our large cities to make this a matter of very great importance. It would pay the Board of Health to furnish these garbage dryers to every family, and pass the most stringent laws compelling their use and proper care.

The most useful plan would be to use the garbage as a fertilizer for worn out lands, but this involves great cost and great danger. Decaying animal and vegetable matter must be carted through the streets, drippings fall upon the pavements, are dried and whirled by the wind into the nostrils of pedestrians.

Where it is possible, garbage should be consumed, and, by the way, a great deal of this is done when nothing is said about it. Many families put into the kitchen range everything of a waste character, and find great economy in fuel in consequence. — New York Ledger.

The Rag Man Finds His Occupation Gone

1910

Rag Man's Business Has Dwindled to Vanishing Point

"Rags, bones, old iron!" is a cry not nearly so familiar to the children of to-day as to those of the '80's. For the ragman, like the chimney sweep and the sun dial maker, is becoming extinct. His used to be a profitable trade. The woolen rags he bought, turned into shoddy, brought thrice their cost. So did the bones, which were ground up for fertilizer. So did the iron, which, melted, lived again. Many millionaire manufacturing families had their beginning in a long-headed ragman. He first ground his rags into shoddy. Then he spun the shoddy into thread. Then, a full-fledged millman, he wove the thread into cloth. But the municipalities of to-day contract with single firms for the disposal of their people's refuse, and the old ragman is disappearing because there is so little for him. For — and this is the great secret — while the ragman made a grand profit on what he bought, it was on the refuse given him that he really throve.


From "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
By Bob Dylan

Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block.
I'd ask him what the matter was,
But I know that he don't talk.


A Poultry Point

"Always ask for the right leg of a chicken or turkey," said a chef. "If the left leg is offered you refuse it. It will be tough and stringy.

"You see, these birds nearly always roost on one leg, the left. Hence that leg becomes very muscular. The sinews are like steel. It is an excellent leg from the athletic, but a vile one from the culinary point of view.

"But the favored right leg remains tender and juicy. Therefore, as the advertisements say, 'Ask for and insist on getting the right leg.' "