USES FOR EVERYTHING.

Colonist, Volume LIII, Issue 13057, 17 March 1911, Page 1

USES FOR EVERYTHING.

Everything has its use to the ragpicker of Paris, according to an interesting article in the "Sydney Morning Herald." The way hair combings are used is simply startling. The cuttings from th« masculine head and beard are worked into strainers for clearing syrups and jellies, while those from my my lady's tresses are mad© into invisible nets, the shorter pieces being converted into sieves for milk and fruit. It is said that the clever rag-pickers find every night about one hundred pounds weight of hair taken from wo- . men's combs, which they sell to the . hair manufacturer at the rate of 6s a j pound. Old tins are much sought after, and help to .make cheap toys and various other articles. Corks are cut down, and used for medicine, gum and ink bottles, and the fragments loft from the cutting are pulverised and i?iadr> into cheap linoleums and cork solos for boots. Bread if clean is oaten by the poor ehiffonnier himself; but if dirty is ground down and sold to cheap restaurants for frying cutlets and browning the tops of hams ; and sometimes the- dirty breiu? is cut up into tiny dice and served as "pain roti" in the soup. Old sponges ore turned into :<so for children's slates, inkpots-, and spirit lamps. Newspapers, street posters and magazines make dolls, imitation Japanese lacquer, boot buttons and pasteboard boxes. Old elastic garters, bands and men's braces roini? forth as rubber gas-tubing and gutta-percha toys, while gilt buttons, military trimmings and broken china give tlie'chtnnisfc interesting work to extract minute pipms of gold from them.