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.

Prisoners Eager to Work in Dump; Clean-up Day Yesterday

Ohio, 1921

Prisoners Work Unguarded in City Dump to Collect Saleable Articles

ELYRIA - Police officers were dumbfounded when they returned to the city dump Thursday night and found August Deshberger, Robert Doyal, Frank Crofton and Fred Lewis still on the job and industriously working. The men arrested and fined $5 each on vagrancy charges had been on the city dump all day unguarded and insisted on returning to work on the dump today. The request was granted by the police.

Police found the cause of the men being anxious to work on the city dump when they discovered that the quartet had been picking out brass, copper, lead, zinc and other salable articles which the men have pooled and from which they expect to realize several dollars from the sale to a junk dealer.

The quartet have also many articles of clothing found which they have appropriated. They claim they struck it lucky by being put to work on the city dump by the police at this time when the annual clean-up is in progress and the sorting out of salable articles made much easier.

The annual spring clean-up will not be completed this week but will require a couple of days next week, said Street Commissioner John Conabee who says 38 loads of rubbish have been hauled to the dump so far. The clean-up wagons have had some difficulty in getting through unimproved streets following the rains earlier in the week. The placing of the rubbish on the curb facilitates the handling, said Mr. Conabee.

—The Chronicle Telegram, Elyria, Ohio, April 22, 1921, page 1.