The Chiffoniers

For hundreds of years, Paris' chiffoniers (rag pickers) had shuffled about quietly in the half-light before dawn, pawing through potato peels and rotten meat in their quest for a handful of old rags or an empty tin can. (Their .reward: for a kilo of rags, 4 francs; for a kilo of iron, half a franc.)

Fortnight ago, the chiffoniers ran into trouble. Prefect of Police Charles Luizet had signed a health and anti-rat measure: "It is forbidden for persons to rummage in garbage cans on the streets."

Next day, an anguished howl was heard across Paris. The chiffoniers cried thatthe Prefect was out to rob 50,000 people of their honest work. Several thousand gathered in cramped, dim-lit Jean Jaures Hall to hear stooped, 63-year-old Rene Cormaud, who "does" the rue des Ecoles and the rue Monge, defend chiffonage. Said Cormaud: "It's those fly-by-nights who cause all the trouble. They have no sense of professional standards. Instead of emptying each can carefully on a burlap sack to sort it out, they dump the garbage helter-skelter on the sidewalk. That way they give the profession a bad name."

The Paris press took up the cry, pointed out that the chiffoniers collect on an average each day 400 tons of paper, 200 tons of rags and 50 tons of leather, rubber, bones, iron, tin. copper and lead.

Prefect Luizet felt the ground swell of sympathy for Paris chiffoniers, and annulled his directive. Declared one of the reprieved entrepreneurs: "What we want .to keep above all else is our liberty. You understand? We want to be our own bosses."

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