5h (edited) • Miscellaneous Posting
The Ragpickers in Paris. 🧥 🎩by Antoine Compagnon
Hello guys as my pronunciation is not very good , I join my text .
I’m going to read a long summary I made by myself after reading an intersting book in French !
I just read Antoine Compagnon's book, which tells the story of the time of the ragpickers in Paris.
In the 19th century, Paris was a dark and dirty city. Before the big street transformations by Haussmann, there were no sidewalks, very few sewers, and no trash cans. People threw all their garbage directly onto the street corners, near big stones called street posts (bornes). In literature, these street stones were symbols of poverty, drunkenness, and abandoned children.
Paris was changing fast between the First and Second Industrial Revolutions. It was the center of France’s economic, cultural, and political life. During this era, people believed in a simple idea: nothing is lost, and everything is transformed.
The Ragpicker
A special worker called the ragpicker—or chiffonnier—played an essential economic role. He was a free man with no boss who worked for himself. Every night, he walked through the streets with a lantern in his hand, a big basket on his back, and a stick with a metal hook to collect useful items from the garbage.
What the Ragpicker Collected
In the 19th century, people recycled everything because there were no modern replacement materials yet—there was no plastic for buttons, no wood pulp for paper, and no chemical fertilizers.
The ragpicker collected many things to help modernize society:
- Old rags: Factory workers did not know how to make paper from wood
- cellulose
- yet. Old clothes and rags were the only way to manufacture paper. Because more people were learning to read books and newspapers, rags were very valuable.
- Animal bones: The ragpicker collected bones from horses, chickens, rabbits, and cats eaten in Paris. Workers burned these bones to create a special black powder called "animal black." Factories used this powder to filter dark beet juice into white sugar, and used the bones to produce phosphorus for matches.
- Animal skins: Workers used the skins of dead animals to make leather for shoes, bags, and clothes. And glue
- Cats and dogs: The ragpicker worked with dogs to hunt street cats. They sold these cats to small inns and taverns, where cooks served them as fake "rabbit" stew.
- Bodies for medicine: Sometimes, ragpickers worked in collaboration with doctors. They dug up dead bodies from the catacombs and sold them to doctors so they could study human bodies and help medical science progress.
- Street mud: After the ragpicker took the rags, skins, and bones, other workers collected the remaining street mud. Farmers bought this dirt to fertilize or nourish their fields and grow vegetables like asparagus.
The Life and Myths of the Ragpicker
Many ragpickers were former soldiers or former prisoners.
There were also female ragpickers.
The ragpicker was often a single man. On Sundays, he spent his time socialising in taverns, cafes, and brothels.
Some rich people thought ragpickers were dangerous, but there were also many myths about them, such as the "philosophical ragpicker" who spoke Greek and Latin and chose this hard job for complete freedom.
In reality, many ragpickers had very good hearts. When parents abandoned babies near the street stones, ragpickers sometimes found these lost children and raised them as their own.
Literature, Poetry, and Culture
Writers and artists loved the ragpicker, and he appeared a lot in the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and the literature of Victor Hugo.
Baudelaire felt that the poet and the ragpicker were like twin figures:
- The flâneur: Both the poet and the ragpicker walked through the streets of Paris for hours looking for hidden treasures—one searched for rags, while the other searched for rhymes. They even spent time in the same cafes.
- Mutual help: The ragpicker provided the recycled paper for the poet's books, and when books did not sell, the ragpicker recycled the unsold paper.
By writing about these workers, poets could kill two birds with one stone: they described the real life of the city and found a powerful metaphor for their own creative work.
The End of the Ragpicker
In 1883, a French official named Eugène Poubelle forced everyone in Paris to use wooden garbage boxes. Inside these new trash cans, everything got wet and dirty, which ruined the rags and bones.
The ragpickers protested, but their job slowly disappeared as modern chemistry invented plastic, chemical fertilizers, and new ways to make paper from wood.
Today, we talk a lot about the environment and the circular economy. Looking back at the 19th century shows us that recycling is not a new idea. It proves that every cloud has a silver lining, because learning about this old lifestyle helps us think about protecting our planet today.
Let’s be good ragpickers by reading literature or poetry!
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The Ragpickers in Paris. 🧥 🎩by Antoine Compagnon
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