They use up seventy thousand brooms a year, and the filth they gather
is rotted in pits and sold for manure, yielding about seven hundred
thousand dollars a year. Until the rubbish of New York streets is made
to yield a profit in a similar manner our streets will never be
cleaned as they should be. But I fear it is hopeless to expect that
New York streets will ever be cleaned as they are in Paris, from lack
of the human element that does the work in the French capital. A hard
ten hours' work would yield the Paris scavenger forty to eighty sous,
and on this sum he would be rich, for he can clothe and feed himself
on a sum which would scarcely buy a New York laborer what drink he
needs alone, to say nothing about food and clothing. But the Paris
scavenger is rarely privileged to work ten hours a day, and his
earnings the year round will barely exceed on an average twenty-five
cents a day. For this sum he can have sufficient food, and as for
clothing, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he never buys any.
At various stages in his career he becomes possessed by a stroke of
fortune of some article of cast-off clothing, which he wears, as it
were, for life. Ordinarily, the poorest blousard has a new blouse once
in five or ten years, and a new pair of wooden shoes in the same time;
but the scavenger's apparel is for ever old, and he never lays it off.
I have seen thousands of men and women in Paris of whom it would be
mere idle dreaming to suppose that they undressed themselves at night.
Their clothing was practically as much a part of them as their skins.
It is only in the matter of lodging that the lowest classes of Paris
are hard pressed. Rents in Paris are high. Few families, even of the
better sort of blousards, have a home attractive enough to compete
with the fascinations of the street or the cafe. Even in the Rue
Mouffetard there are cafes where wine is sold at two sous the glass,
and even cheaper, which would put to the blush some of the most
frequented "saloons" of Broadway in point of elegance and comfort for
the lounger. Stuccoed walls, frescoed ceilings, huge mirrors, velvet
sofas, marble-topped tables, gleaming chandeliers, gilt and glitter
that would be called "palatial" in New York, make the place
attractive. Yet a man could hardly be too ragged to be welcome therein
if he had a few sous in his pocket.

The scavenger and the ragpicker, being the lowest grade of blousards,
do not always rise to the dignit