CORDAGE, STRINGS AND BAGS. Cordage might be said to embrace all the various classifications of bagging, rope and junk in its different characters; it is adapted to the paper maker's uses, and enters almost wholly into wrapping and similar coarse manufacture. Gunny is an East India production, an article of great importance, and is very generally used as bagging for coffee, spices, cotton and all classes of general merchandise. Nearly all our envelopes and wrapping paper are made from it. Kentucky bagging is a native manufacture of flax, and is used largely in lieu of linen stock, and is said to make the best qualities of bank note paper. Manilla rope is used for making Manilla paper, and gives a very tough article; the bags at the grocery stores are all made of Manilla rope. A bogus Manilla paper is made from gunnies, but it is not strong enough to stand the strain for holding cut nails, raisins, crackers and similar merchandise. Bale rope and strings make hardware paper and pasteboard. Oakum junk or tarred rope is picked into fibre and sold for caulking ships. The past three years this has been an accumulative stock, owing to the depression of the ship-building interest in the country, and the large dealers who make a specialty of cordage stock are heavy holders. The refuse and sweepings of the old junk dealers' paper stock, the very rubbish of rubbish, dirty rags, bits of rope, Manilla, gunny, hemp and cotton, is carefully collected, called paper junk, is ground up into pulp, spread out to dry, rolled into sheets and is then leather board, which is now in very general use as stiffenings and inner soles. OLD PAPER. Old paper of any kind or character is valuable for re-working. Writing and print papers make excellent newspaper. Some New York and Boston papers print three-quarters of their issues on old print papers; of course the ink is bleached out in the pulp, as is the color from the rag. Old papers originally white and too dirty and mutilated for handling, with especial care are made over into paper-hangings and card middles. Every one of the very many kinds of paper have each a quotable value as old stock. In the manufacture of paper it is estimated that fifty per cent. is waste; that one ton of paper stock, rags, hemp or jute, will make one-half ton of paper. It may be interesting to know that many of our daily papers are printed on paper made wholly or in part, of wood or straw. Poplar makes the best wood pulp, and rye the best straw pulp. OLD IRON. Scrap Iron. The largest and most important item of old metals is that of bits of old wrought iron. They have an appreciative value, and are never an idle or accumulative stock in the market. The manufacturers of steel shaftings and other forgings, always find it difficult to procure good round lots for immediate delivery, and the collectors of old metals have always large standing orders on their books for scrap iron of every grade. It is with iron and metals as with rags; the quality of the original manufacture regulates the value of the refuse or old stock, while the size and condition, as free from rust and dirt, affect the grade. Fully one-half of the wrought scrap iron comes from abroad, and a large percentage of this is from England. This is a very singular fact, but nevertheless true; and it is an important item that labor and materials are much cheaper abroad than here, and that the ore gives a more uniform and directly economical manufacture. Considering these conditions the comparatively trifling difference between ore and scrap iron affords but little margin in the risk run in re-working the old into standard stock. As America affords a ready market for the refuse stock, a very large amount of the collections of Europe are here utilized. The annual importations of scrap iron are about one hundred and forty-five thousand tons, valued at a trifle over three million one hundred thousand dollars; only bar iron and railroad rails exceed these figures as metal imports. The bulk of the stock, both foreign and domestic, goes to Pittsburgh, while our New England manufacturers consume three-fourths of the amount worked up outside of the Iron City. The sorting of scrap iron is a shrewd trade, and all the largest manufacturers have an experienced and thorough manipulator of their old iron heaps. The steel, Norway iron, soft and hard wrought, are as a whole or a mixture entered successfully into the production of the first best iron and steel. When the largest junk dealers have the facilities and men experienced to detect in their collections choice grades of scrap iron, the aggregate value of the whole stock is enhanced by culling such into classes. Iron is like dough; the more it is properly and expeditiously worked, the better it becomes. Hence it is that choice scrap iron runs so closely to the value of the pig. Scrap iron is cut up, if in large pieces, into small bits and piled in little heaps ten inches high, ten inches broad, and fifteen inches long, weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, put in a furnace and baked to a melting heat, and then rolled or hammered into bars or ingots, from which shape it is then manufactured into desirable styles and uses. The shafts of steamboats, the long iron roll' that runs across the boat on which the paddle-wheels revolve, and frequently twenty-eight tons weight, are made usually of scrap iron. By laying these baked batches together, hammering them out round, and continuing to lay on these bakings of scraps, in hammering them into this mass and shape, and driving out the length, the desired size in every respect is secured. Most of our shovels, nails and tacks are made of scrap iron. For the latter purposes the iron is puddled or melted into a mass in a furnace or stack that holds about eight hundred pounds. A sort of long iron poker is used to keep the melted mass stirred or puddled up, and at a certain heat round balls of this melted mass, weighing about one hundred and sixty pounds, are wound round the end of the poker and taken out, hammered and rolled into the desired thickness for the required sizes of nails or tacks. Thus giving briefly how scrap iron is utilized and a few of its purposes, a general index is had of the modus operandi and the universal use that old metals have. Cast Scrap has but one grade, though some qualities are more desirable than others, as is the case with the original ore, but as it all goes with pig iron into the furnace, and is run into moulds and shapes, it has a very uniform market value, hinged on the quotations for pig iron or ore. The collections of cast scrap amount to two-thirds more than wrought scrap, and a shade less than one-half cent per pound under the latter's value. They go quickly into consumption, chiefly in the localities where collected; little, if any, comes from abroad, as the duty, freight and price make it more economical to send us the pig. The capital employed in the collection of old iron coöperates in the purchase of all classes of junk, but this special interest, old iron, has a class of buyers, speculators and foundry contractors that move each year in this city nearly two million dollars. OLD METALS. As one might say, all metals but iron come under the head of metals. Iron is considered very different from metals, and the collectors of old stocks dispose of their iron and metals to two different dealers who make a specialty in each. There are but three leading dealers in old metals in New England, and they are in this city; they handle each year a little over a million dollars' worth of stock; they do not trade in iron, only as it is found mixed in with their metals, which they sell without any effort to enhance its value direct to the old iron dealers. The bulk of the stock comes from New England, excepting Southwestern Connecticut, and from Canada; all this stock from the latter place is marketed in this city. Fair quantities come from the Barbadoes, $20,000 worth having been landed here from these islands within two months. South America and South Africa send large invoices to this market, and all of our Yankee coasting vessels pick up good round lots at small cost and bring them here, reaping a neat profit to captain or owners. In handling old metals, as in other classes of merchandise, intelligence and prudence reap the highest reward, and our leading old metal dealers have established facilities for utilizing their stocks, and reducing the assortments to cleaner or other material, and thus make the business very profitable. The amount of profit on a single pound or hundred pounds of old stock is apparently quite insignificant, but in the vast quantities that change hands there rolls up a large and attractive aggregate of profit. The tinsmiths in the country, the peddling rag and tin dealers, the iron manufacturers and machinists, who collect odd broken pieces of metals, send their little bundles into the petty junk stores, where it is sorted into leading characteristics, and thence re-sold to the large dealers, who re-sort, re-work, smelt or cleanse it, placing it on the market in a strictly merchantable form. Copper is quoted as heavy and light. The former is sheet, over 1-16 of an inch thick, or old kettles, clear bolts, etc. The grade is regulated, as less bulk gives, in proportion, more weight, and so clear bolts are but c. under the price of ingot. It takes a high degree of heat to melt copper, and as it is all done in crucibles, it is essential that the material be solid and packed in firm in the crucible to secure an economy in fire and labor. Light copper is thin sheets, and is, if clean, worth about 1 c. under the price of ingot. This grade of stock is bought by the chemical manufacturers, and being cut up by acids, makes blue vitriol, copper paint, etc. Copper of either grade, if dirty, is rated at its peculiar intrinsic value as levied by the calculation of what dross and waste there will be; it is seldom, however, sold in condition to run more than 3 c. below the price of ingot. Brass is an alloy of copper and spelter. It has two classifications, heavy and light. The former is worth about one-half the price of copper. The latter, now mostly lamp trimmings, is usually very dirty and makes considerable waste. This light, or sheet brass, cannot be melted in a crucible; it does not pack solid enough to hold the heat. It is melted in furnaces or cupolas; here the spelter all turns to vapor, goes up the chimney, and striking the cold air, solidifies and falls in a white dust on the roof; this, of course, is gathered up and melted in crucibles into bars of spelter. Composition is an alloy of copper and tin; is much harder and more valuable than brass, bringing from two to four cents per pound more. This is what machinery bearings and the best faucets are made of. This can be directly re-moulded into shapes and uses. "SHODDY SILVER." Pewter is the shoddy silver ware of the day. The vast collections of defunct water-pitchers, broken castors, tea services and once elegantly designed table ornaments are an index that base imitations have very genuine countenance. It is here one finds the most suggestive topics for thought. Amidst these relics of humbug and shabby gentility, collected year by year in tons and tons, originally costing dollars, and by a few years or even months' service becoming rubbish, is the evidence that there is a very large and profitable class catering to the metal dealer's pocket and stock; spending money lavishly on gewgaws, and living amidst polished pewter, with brass enough in common stock to palm off their resplendent furnishings as silver and gold. One Boston dealer handles three tons a month of just this class of stock. OLD LEAD, ZINC, ETC. Lead.-Most of the old lead here in New England goes into the Boston Lead Works, and is there worked over into pipes and sheets. They also purchase largely in New York. Zinc has no classification in the junk shop as Mosselman, American, etc. It is all one grade, irrespective of its original quality. It is melted into slabs, then known as spelter, going to the brass and copper founders. Cullett is broken flint glass, and goes back directly to manufacturers of glass. OLD RUBBER. Para is the old-fashioned rubbers, such goods as our grandfathers wore, now quite out of the market. It is pure rubber, but not over one thousand tons are collected in a year all over the country. One dealer in this city receives about one hundred and fifty tons each year. Patent Rubber is the pure article adulterated or vulcanized with sulphur, lead, etc.; this is what all rubber goods are now made of. This stock is ground up and makes what is known as rubber packing for railroad and boiler makers' uses. Such is the use formerly made of old car springs after removing the iron ring. THE VALUE OF TRASH. The itinerant venders of tin, wooden and glass ware, who take their pay in rags, reaping a profit in both transfers, make it a rule to refuse all classes of stock but white or white mixed rags, and thus generally secure what they call worthless trash as an accommodation and a riddance. Visit any of the larger city dumping grounds, and now having an idea of the values of old material, see the immense piles accumulated in a day by the busy gamins, and wretched men and women, you will seldom see a white rag in their collection; but woollens, shoddies, waste and rope interspersed with old iron and coals; this will demonstrate the fact that a knowledge of the relative value the old bears to the new is not of general circulation. Old Junk is a merchantable article; the trade in it is not merely a petty traffic in refuse or despoiled materials, or a precarious or fostering peculation system; but a great business, operated in with as much shrewdness and care as transactions in dry goods or groceries. |