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Bundles of family letters, of priceless value to the
genealogist; private journals, held very sacred by
the ones who poured their hearts out on the pages,
_ went mercilessly into the boiling tanks, to re-appear
perhaps i in the very morning journal whose columns
some of us were scanning for the latest news from
the seat of war. Rejected manuscripts were among
the contents of the tin-pedlers’ bags; telling stories
of disappointment. not written in the text, but des-
tined, possibly, for a better use in their new shape,
after going through the paper-mill, than if the editor

 

  

ee

A DAY WITH RAGS, TATTERS & CO.

employer of stealing a diamond ear-drop which was
afterwards found among: the paper-rags. “ Once,”
said one of the women who worked at sorting rags,
“my girl found five dollars, right there, a bill, and we
used to find gold rings and such things. Now it is
different.”

The reason why it is different now is that a great
deal of the paper is made of the waste from cotton
factories, The time of mummy wrappings and Italian
fine needlework was in the past; and it was a pro-
saic region of stuff of to-day into which we stepped

 

SORTING.

had found them “available.” Sometimes there was
the evidence of somebody’s dishonesty, in pieces of
harness, heavy buckles and straps, which had been
hidden in a bundle of rags to make it weigh more.
Several times there was a sealed letter of importance,
even containing money, the loss of which from the
post-office or failure to reach the address had caused
business troubles and anxieties for years; and jewelry
would be found, on account of which, perhaps, some
poor seamstress had been made to suffer. You will
remember how one was once agctned by her rich

from the sidewalk on our first day at the mill. We
began at the beginning — with the rag room — which
was then cluttered with the material above men-
tioned ; waste from a mill, and everything that had
been swept up with it, pieces of bobbins and quills,
iron, wood, and rubbish in general. _

The first thing was to submit it to a_ tearing
and whirling process in a revolving machine called.
a “duster,” where a cylinder set with spikes: like
harrow teeth, gave the incongruous mass a vigorous
shaking up, during which the wood avd meta] and