A Rag-picker, or Chiffonnier, was a 19th- and early 20th-century term for someone who made a living by rummaging through refuse in the streets to collect material for salvage. Scraps of cloth and paper could be turned into cardboard, broken glass could be melted down and reused, and even dead cats and dogs could be skinned to make clothes. The rag-pickers did not recycle the materials themselves; they would simply collect whatever they could find and turn it over to a "master rag-picker" (usually a former rag-picker) who would, in turn, sell it—generally by weight—to wealthy investors with the means to convert the materials into something more profitable.

Although it was solely a job for the lowest of the working classes, rag-picking was considered an honest occupation, more on the level of street sweeper

Street sweeper

A street sweeper or street cleaner can refer to a person's occupation or a machine that cleans streets, usually in an urban area.-History of street sweeping in the United States:...

 than of a beggar. In Paris, for instance, rag-pickers were regulated by law: Their operations were restricted to certain times of night, and they were required to return any unusually valuable items to the owner or to the authorities. When Eugène Poubelle

Eugène Poubelle

Eugène-René Poubelle was the man who introduced the dustbin, or trash can, to Paris and after whom the French dustbin is now named...

 introduced the garbage can in 1884, he was criticized in the French newspapers for meddling with the rag-pickers' livelihoods. Modern sanitation and recycling programs ultimately caused the profession to decline, though it did not disappear entirely; rag and bone men

Rag and bone man

Rag and bone man is a British phrase for a junk dealer. Historically the phrase referred to an individual who would travel the streets of a city with a horsedrawn cart, and would collect old rags for making fabric and paper, bones for making glue, scrap iron for recycling, and assorted miscellany...

 are not uncommon in England today.

Legacy

• Francis Saltus Saltus
  Francis Saltus Saltus
  Francis Saltus Saltus was an American poet.-Biography:Born in 1849 in New York City, he was the elder half-brother of once popular but now relatively obscure novelist Edgar Saltus. He was educated at Columbia University and later at the Roblot Institution in Paris...
  
  ' Shadows and Ideals (1890) includes a poem about rag-pickers entitled "The Old Rag-picker of Paris".
• A section of tenement buildings near Chatham Square, Manhattan
  Chatham Square, Manhattan
  Chatham Square is a major intersection in Manhattan's Chinatown. The square lies at the confluence of seven streets: Bowery, East Broadway, St. James Place, Mott Street, Oliver Street, Worth Street and Park Row. The postal ZIP Code is 10038.-History:...
  
   became known as Rag-picker's Court, as this was the profession of most of its residents. In 1879, William Allen Rogers
  William Allen Rogers
  William Allen Rogers was an American political cartoonist born in Springfield, Ohio in 1854. He studied at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Wittenberg College, but never graduated. Rogers taught himself to draw and began submitting political cartoons to Midwestern newspapers in his teens...
  
   drew the rag-strewn courtyard for Harper's Weekly
  Harper's Weekly
  Harper's Weekly was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor...
  
   as part of a series of engravings focused on inner-city life.
• In the 1862 novel Les Misérables
  Les Misérables
  Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
  
  , the character Vargouleme is a rag-picker. He considers himself fortunate because, unlike many on the streets of Paris, he has a profession.