Rubbish

“ In particular, objects are constantly thrown into rubbish-pits many years, perhaps even centuries, after those objects have passed out of use. Whenever, even in a village, an old cottage is pulled down or a new one built, old rubbish gets shifted to new places and mixed with rubbish of a quite different age. ”

“ When I see men, women and children poking over the masses of evil-smelling rubbish on the mammoth dump-heaps that deface the landscape near some of our great cities, or going from house to house collecting old iron or rubber or newspapers, or picking over the slag along the railways for chance lumps of coal, I wish that there were some way of getting them away into the woods where firewood is rotting and doing harm besides, a waste that works both ways, you see. ”

“ We squander our money on frippery—not in dress merely, but in hideous ornaments for our fire-places, in antimacassars of disagreeably suggestive name, in toys and trinkets and imitation rubbish of all kinds, which encumber our table-surfaces, and are dust-traps occupying the minds and mornings of our parlour-maids to keep them clean. ”

“ Heaven forbid!—but at the great collection of rubbish in the world saved because somebody beloved has touched it. Bless the world—what a deliciously haunted place it is, with more than enough of these priceless treasures to fill everybody's bureau-drawer! ”

“ Swaggering, in their own noisy and violent manner, into several courts and blind alleys, they caught up all the lighter articles of rubbish that lay about, hurled them against the frail and cracked windows—some of which they broke, and others of which they could not break by reason of their having been broken already. ”

“ Strangely do the tastes of men differ, according to their employment and habits of life. 'What a nice well would that be,' said a labouring man to me one day, 'if all that rubbish was cleared off.' The 'rubbish' was some of the most beautiful mosses and lichens and ferns and other wild growths, as could possibly be seen. Defend us from the tyranny of trimness and neatness, showing itself in this way! ”

“ It is wiser to flee and leave hoarded treasure to be ingulfed. That the rubbish was once sound theology, I grant, but it has crumbled, and its usefulness of a thousand years ago will not it save from the ash-heap of outgrown ideas to-day. ”

“ Heaps of rubbish are on all sides visible, whence every shower of rain, not to mention the industry of the natives in digging, discovers pieces of precious marble, and sometimes antient coins, and fragments of sculpture. ”

“ Rubbish is left in the burning sun for children to play in, street, river, and cliff being polluted with it, and many small towns are in a truly miserable state. The mayor of one of them was asked why a cart was not sent to collect the rubbish, and his answer was typical. ”

“ To those who have travelled it is quite extraordinary what an appalling mass of nonsensical rubbish can be supplied to the public by politicians, by newspaper penny-a-liners, and by home royal geographo-parasites at large, who base their arguments on such unsteady foundation. ”

“ The term rubbish is a polite corruption of the original word rubbage, which is still used by uneducated people; ish is an adjectival termination, as whitish, slavish, brutish, &c., and is used only in connection with such substantives as are derived from adjectives, as English, Scottish, &c. ”

“ These complex issues being satisfactorily settled the exploitation of the erstwhile waste, or rubbish, is energetically pursued. It has now become a potentially valuable by-product, and, accordingly, must be worked for all it is worth. ”

“ Pipes, rags, shells, broken and discarded tubs: every one flung whatever was useless to him into the street, thus affording the passer-by an opportunity of exercising all his five senses with the rubbish. ”

“ Waste papers, rubbish, greasy cloths, oily waste and rags should be destroyed. They should never be allowed to collect in cellars, attics, or closets, under the stairs or in the yard. Keep the whole house clean. Dust, dirt, and rubbish are fire-breeders. [Pg 122] This is especially true in factories, shops, fruit and grocery stores, schoolhouses, churches, and all public buildings. It is cheaper to throw away barrels, boxes, papers, sawdust, painter's cloths, old rags—waste of any kind—than to burn it up by setting the house on fire. ”

“ Don’t fail to provide a covered, leak-proof metal can for garbage, and to keep it covered at all times.
5. Don’t sweep or throw dirt, rubbish, waste-paper, grass-cuttings, fruit-peelings, or anything else into the street. Put them in tight rubbish receptacles or tie them into bundles to be taken up by the collector.
6. Don’t forget that all dirt or rubbish, and every scrap of paper carelessly thrown into the street must later be picked up and removed, and that the taxpayer must pay for having this done. Why?
QUESTIONS
How do streets become dirty? ”

“ Can't a person remove a little rubbish out of their house, without having a set of devils to watch us?—Take care you are not caught in the trap some day or other.' From the natural dread which every one of the lodgers in the house entertained of this horrid woman, it was not deemed prudent to prosecute any inquiry into the circumstances of the conduct of Cook in carrying away a load, as it was termed, of rubbish from the house ”

“ It must be taken into consideration that later and more cultured periods yield higher deposits of rubbish than earlier ones, which are remains of simpler conditions of life, and of unpretentious dwelling-places. Also in the course of a long period the rubbish is much more pressed together by its own weight than in a shorter period, when the process of compression has not been so prolonged. ”

“ It is astonishing what a number of utterly valueless things are allowed to remain in nearly every household, and it is well remarked that no one ever knows what a collection of rubbish he possesses till he has occasion to remove. ”

“ To such as have accustomed themselves to look down upon this place as a plague-spot—a pest that we should be well rid of, this narrative will shew that there is good material to be picked out of the rubbish, and that even the rubbish itself may be capable of conversion into good material. In talking to policemen, I have more than once heard them say, “We hardly ever take up any of the Pottery people for theft; they are known amongst us to be honest and industrious. ”

“ Three-fourths of the solid wastes that proceed from human dwellings—scraps of food, waste paper, worthless vegetables, worn-out utensils, bones, weeds, old boots and shoes, whatever unmanageable and unnamable rubbish appears—ought to be at once consumed by fire, for which purpose a small cremating furnace should be found in every house. ”

“ Rubbish is left lying about near the cellar furnace; matches are placed where children can reach them; kerosene or gasoline is used to light the kitchen fire; chimneys are allowed to go unrepaired and uncleaned; ends of cigarettes are thrown on the floor or into the waste basket—individual carelessness may take many forms. ”

“ After a while he'll get so that he can dispose of several things at once, and the time may come when I'll have to look over the rubbish to be sure that nothing valuable has gone, because throwing away is just as insidious a habit as any other. ”

“ The food wastes of the kitchen and table, consisting of decomposable organic matter, and commonly known as garbage, require separate disposal; and the same is true of ashes, waste paper, and other rubbish. Street dirt must be collected and removed, and the streets must be sprinkled to keep down the dust which is inevitable even with the best sweeping. ”

“ Have a separate can or barrel for ashes and all glass and metal rubbish. The fair criterion of good housekeeping is the amount of garbage. A large amount of garbage means carelessness and waste in the kitchen. ”

“ The high prices paid for reclaimable rubbish since the war began and the demand of the Federal Government that nothing be wasted have caused many cities to give much attention to the matter of rescuing salable rubbish. ”

“ The dirty neglected portions of our city where refuse and rubbish, animal and vegetable matters are deposited and allowed to rest and send up their poisonous odors from house to house, must be looked after. ”

“ This system of living on flats, up to I know not what story, must be most unfavorable to cleanliness, since they have to fetch their water all that distance towards heaven, and how they get rid of their rubbish is best known to themselves. ”

“ Of other houses, reduced, one may say, to powder, only heaps of rubbish remain, in which one can distinguish among pieces of tiles and bricks and plaster chests of drawers, pianos, sideboards, sewing machines, and so forth, broken and mixed with what is left of household linen and crockery. ”

“ It was not attractive in the spring, for man had done what he could to deface it. Here is a [Pg 193] curious fact: the human being is capable of a certain amount of civilization under the pressure of the necessities of city life. He—or she—will learn to dispose inoffensively of the waste and rubbish that drag after him like a trail wherever he goes. He—and always likewise she—can be taught to burn his waste paper, to bag his rags, to barrel his ashes, to burn the refuse from his table, to hide the relics of china and glass. ”

“ It became more difficult as they went on, for the earth which they disturbed was in their way; and, lying flat on their stomachs in the passage, they were obliged at every instant to remove the rubbish that obstructed them. ”

“ The heaps of rubbish have been removed from the centres of the squares and the corners of the different streets, to the great discomfiture of the tribes of hungry dogs which, for the comfort of the tired population, had not energy to bay through the night. ”

“ Enormous waste is caused by fire, and most fires are due to carelessness—carelessness in handling matches, in the use of oil stoves, in accumulations of rubbish, in disposing of hot ashes, in smoking where there are inflammable materials. ”

“ People often threw the rubbish from their houses onto the street although they were supposed to cart it outside the city walls and to clean the frontage of their houses once a week. Dustmen scavenged through the rubbish on the streets. Pigs and geese were no longer allowed to run at large in the streets, but had to be fed at home. There were other city rules on building, public order, the use of fountains, precautions against fire, trading rights in various districts, closing time of taverns, and when refuse could be thrown into the streets, e.g. ”

“ For although the tenements may be scrubbed to their remotest corners, on this one occasion, the cleansing stops at the curbstone. A great deal of the filthy rubbish accumulated in a year is pitched into the street, often through the windows ”

“ It destroys, it is true, something of their traditional reputation for industry that they should thus abandon themselves to despair rather than set to work to clear away the rubbish strewn about their dwelling-places. ”

“ Burning combustible rubbish that is not salable and using the ashes to fill in low land, or for road or sidewalk making, or selling part for use in partitions for fireproof buildings or for laying cellar floors. ”

“ In cities which collect during the day and require the cans to be left at the curb serious objections are reported because the array of cans and rubbish 129along the street on the day of collection makes the thoroughfare unsightly. ”

“ I might have added domestic cleanliness among the desiderata; but in the matter of fireplaces, the true-born Briton, in spite of his fastidiousness in respect to shirt-collars, etc., is a devoted worshiper of dirt. No matter how elegant his drawing-room, he must defile it with a coal-scuttle, with dirty coals, poker, shovel, and tongs, dirty ash-pit, dirty cinders, ashes, and dust, and he must amuse himself by doing the dirty work of a stoker towards his “cheerful, companionable, pokeable” open fire. ”

“ Nothing should be put into ashcans except ashes. Garbage is the waste from food, or any substances which are wet or subject to decomposition. Trash is papers, cans, bottles, egg shells, glass, hair, dust, broken objects of all sorts and kindred things. This class may have to be subdivided several times for the convenience of people who remove it, but the three main divisions in house waste are made not on account of requirement but for the sake of neatness and decency. ”

“ In this respect they look back with unlimited disgust upon the people of your day with their filthy horses and dogs perambulating and befouling the streets, their stables, stores and meat shops full of the odors of decaying vegetable and animal matter, their accumulations of ashes and cinders and dust, and of filth and garbage in foul cess pools, barrels, gutters, vaults and sewers, their personal habits of eating and drinking with their sequelae and the necessary cooking and dishwashing, and their smoking and tobacco chewing and spitting. ”

“ Householders swept the filth of their apartments into the streets, and threw garbage there also, where, with the ground of rush and straw, a most intolerably filthy condition was produced, which rain modified, but did not remove. Moreover, people seldom bathed their bodies or washed their clothes. ”

“ For the contentions that loosen the very foundations of love, that crumble away all its fine traceries and carved work, about what miserable, worthless things do they commonly begin!—a dinner underdone, too much oil consumed, a newspaper torn, a waste of coal or soap, a dish broken!—and for this miserable sort of trash, very good, very generous, very religious people will sometimes waste and throw{24} away by double-handfuls the very thing for which houses are built and coal burned, and all the paraphernalia of a home established,—their happiness. ”