| Loads. | ||
| 1100 miles of road, | ⅛ load per day | 137 |
| „ | Weekly | 825 |
| „ | Yearly | 42,900 |
Yearly Total of the Gross Quantity of Street-Refuse, with the Proportionate Quantity of “Mac” collected from the macadamized Thoroughfares of the Metropolis.
| Street Refuse. | “Mac.” | |
|---|---|---|
| Cart-loads. | Loads. | |
| 100 miles of macadamized roads | 62,400 | 31,200 |
| 1100 miles ditto ditto | 85,800 | 42,900 |
| 148,200 | 74,100 |
Thus upwards of 74,000 cart-loads of “mac” are, at a low computation, annually scraped and swept from the metropolitan thoroughfares.
So far as to the quantity of “mac” collected, and now as to its uses.
“‘Mac,’ or Macadam,” says one of Mr. Cochrane’s Reports, “is a grand prize to the scavenging contractor, who finds ready vend and a high price for it among the builders and brick-makers. Those who paid for the road—and their surveyors, possibly—know nothing of its value, or of their own loss by its removal from the road; they consider it in the light of dirt—offensive dirt—and are glad to pay the scavenger for carrying it away! When the broom comes, the scavenger’s men take care to go deep enough; and many of them are, moreover, instructed to keep the ‘mac’ as free from admixture with foreign substances as possible; for, though cattle-dung be valuable enough in itself, the ‘mac’ loses its value to the builder and brickmaker by being mixed with it. Indeed, both are valuable for their respective uses if kept separate, not otherwise.”
On my first making inquiries as to the uses and value of “mac,” I was frequently told that it was utterly valueless, and that great trouble and expense were incurred in merely getting rid of it. That this is the case with many contractors is, doubtlessly, the fact; for now, unless the “mac,” or, rather, the general road-dirt, be ordered, or a market for it be assured, it must be got rid of without a remuneration. Even when the contractor can shoot the “mac” in his own yard, and keep it there for a customer, there is the cost of re-loading and re-carting; a cost which a customer requiring to use it at any distance may not choose to incur. Great quantities of “mac,” therefore, are wasted; and more would be wasted, were there places to waste it in.
Let me, therefore, before speaking of the uses and sale of it, point out some of the reasons for this wasting of the “mac” with other street-dirt. In the first place, the weight of a cart-load of street-refuse of any kind is usually estimated at a ton; but I am assured that the weight of a cart-load of “stiff mac” is a ton and a quarter at the least; and this weight becomes so trying to a scavenger’s horse, as the day’s work advances, that the contractor, to spare the animal, is often glad to get rid of the “mac” in any manner and without any remuneration. Thousands of loads of “mac,” or rather of mixed street-dirt, have for this, and other reasons, been thrown away; and no small quantity has been thrown down the gulley-holes, to find its way into that main metropolitan sewer, the Thames. Of this matter, however, I shall have to speak hereafter.
There is no doubt that it is common for contractors to represent the “mac” they collect as being utterly valueless, and indeed an incumbrance. The “mixed mac,” as I have said, may be so. Some contractors urge, especially in their bargains with the parish board, that all kinds of street dirt are not only worthless, but expensive to be got rid of. Five or six years ago, this was urged very strenuously, for then there was what was accounted a combination among the contractors. The south-west district of St. Pancras, until within the last six years, received from the contractor for the public scavengery, 100l. for the year’s aggregation of street and house dirt. Since then, however, they have had to pay him 500l. for removing it.