MODERN METHODS OF STREET CLEANING 



officer of the Street Cleaning Department. When the 

 signal is given -by this officer, the contractor puts his 

 men upon the streets and works where the department 

 directs. The force of labor employed often numbers 

 many thousand and is recruited from whatever source 

 may be available at the moment. The horses and carts 

 are obtained by the contractor wherever he is able to 

 get them. They are of every sort, kind, and descrip- 

 tion. 



The workmen shovel the snow into piles and then 

 load it into the carts. The carts carry the snow to 

 the harbor and empty it into the water from the bulk- 

 heads. The contractor is paid according to the quan- 

 tity of snow removed. 



Two systems have been devised for estimating the 

 quantities of snow. By one of these systems the 

 quantity of snow removed has been computed by mul- 

 tiplying the area cleaned by the depth of the snowfall. 

 The chief advantage in this plan of estimation is that 

 it saves a large amount of supervision which the Street 

 Cleaning Department must exercise over the accounts. 

 It was devised to prevent fraud and to economize in 

 the number of city inspectors required. Its defects 

 include the possibility of great shrinkage due to rain 

 and sun. This system was put in use after the winter 

 of 1902-03. The other system of reckoning is by actual 

 count of the carts and an estimation of the capacity 

 of each. This plan has certain obvious advantages, 

 but, owing to the very large amount of attention re- 

 quired by the city to prevent errors, the regular work 

 of collecting refuse from the houses has to be abandoned 

 at times in order to provide enough inspectors. 



Up to the present time no satisfactory method has 



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