Contrast the methods obtaining in the United States and Britain with those peculiar to France. That picturesque figure of French civic life, the _chiffonnier_, is the perennial butt of humorists and cartoonists. But he is a powerful economic factor. Through his efforts millions sterling are saved annually to the French nation. The rag-picker and his colleagues “specializing” in other forms of spoil lurking in the ash-barrel pursue their work so diligently as to secure everything, except vegetable matter, which is capable of being worked up into other forms by the exercise of brains and commercial enterprise. It may not seem a savoury occupation to rake over the repulsive assorted contents of the household dust-bin, but it serves to swell, to an appreciable degree, the streams of raw materials flowing into the insatiable maws of industry. What is left after these industrious toilers have completed their work finds its way to the dust-destructor to assist in the raising of steam to drive engines and generators for the supply of electricity. The diligent exploitation of waste exercises a far-reaching influence upon the wealth of nations. If we were to turn the whole of our residues, both industrial and domestic, to the utmost account we should be able to cut down our annual expenditure upon purchases from abroad to a very startling degree. Every ton of import saved not only represents the retention of so much sterling in our pocket, but releases a ton of shipping for the movement of other material, not necessarily to these islands, but between other countries, since it must not be forgotten that we derive an appreciable proportion of our national income from carrying the trade of the world. If we were to salvage all the rags entering into the domestic refuse of the nation we could reduce our imports of wool during the year by 19,000 tons, and allow 15,000 tons of shipping space to be devoted to other purposes. From the yield of cotton refuse derived from the dust-bins we could turn out 16,000 tons of new paper. If we were to become miserly in our collection of waste-paper and to turn it back into the mills, we could secure a further 44,000 tons of new paper during the year and save the import of 75,000 tons of wet pulp from Scandinavia. Were all our old tins handed over to the steel-makers we could reproduce from this raw material 74,000 tons of new steel and dispense with 148,000 tons of Spanish ore. The steel obtainable from the re-smelting of old tins alone would furnish sufficient material to construct approximately forty 3,000-ton vessels.