Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 171, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1911 — AN ODD LIVELIHOOD [ARTICLE]

AN ODD LIVELIHOOD

BUG KILLING POWDERS ARE MADE FROM "SNIPES.”

Two Men in St. Louis Gain a « Mag by Picking Up Cigar and Cigarette Butts That Are Thrown Away by the Smokers. 81. Louis. Mo.—London wonders why St. Louis is so wasteful of its halfsmoked cigars. The Londoner has heard that we are careless about taking care of the cigar butts and cigarette snipes that fall on the streets from day to day. Such wastefulness is unheard of in the “right little, tight little island" overseas, where conservation of matter is practiced to the last degree. In a report recent 1 y made by & commission from the London commercial bodies, St. Louis is taken to task for Its seeming extravagance in this one particular. “We find,” says this document, “that no effort Is made on the part of the city or its citizens to take advantage of this waste. There are no Individuals who make of this a business.” The members of this learned commission were surely wrong. They have been misled and misinformed. There are two or three St. Louisans who make of this a means to a livelihood. It is a twilight task In St Louis. Late In the afternoon or early In the evenings these forlorn individuals pace the middle, the right and the left of the street In search of the dead and altogether moribund cigar butt. Neither do they pass by In scorn the stubs of the cigarette. Two St. Louisans make a livelihood by gathering these remnants of the smokers* delight and grinding them into dust. The cigar ends are gathered by the sackful. A sharpened umbrella handle of steel is used by the gatherer. Armed with this and equipped with a cavernous bag slung over his shoulders, he hies him forth about the time that the downtown crowds start homeward. Snipe after snipe and butt after butt is impaled upon the sharpened ferrule. Ground up, these cigar ends become insect powders and bug. destroyers. Housewives buy them to drive away the plagues that beset the rubber plant and maiden hair fern. Gardeners use these to discourage the attentions of the white moth among the early cabbages. Florists use this bug dust in order to exterminate the plant lice that beset the outdoor flowers. Only the Association of St. Louis Glgar Dealers can guess how many butts, snipes and ends bestrew the streets at nightfall. They must run Into the tens of thousands. It Is rich picking for the snipe hunter, whatever use he puts them to. In the foreign cities the snipe hunter is an institution. Since Sirr Walter Raleigh Introduced the Indian weed Into Europe the hunter of cigar ends has had an occupation. It is handed down from father to son. It Is jealously guarded and bought and sold like any other business. Small wonder then that the visiting Britishers were appalled by the seeming waste on St. Louis streets.