Yaw & Garbage

1890: The Minnesota Health Department supported Yaw's proposal. 

What was it? 

To arrange  four dump sites along the railroad tracks in Brooklyn township to collect the waste-- over 180,000 loads of refuse were dumped into the Mississippi the previous year--and then market it for fertilizer to the local market gardeners. He would:

• Take care of every pound of garbage sent to him from Minneapolis.
• Provide trestles for convenience in dumping.
• Operate pumps by wind power, so as to keep the heaps of matter from heating and spoiling.
• He would sell the fertilizer to the farmers for a reasonable price.
• He would rid the city of the garbage nuisance, and satisfy a need of Brooklyn township's market gardeners.

Who was that guy?

Page Yaw. The first child of Ambrose Spencer Yaw, a cowbell maker, born in Boston.....New York (Erie County). His father died when he was 13; he migrated to Minnesota when he was 25; he married Flora Wales in 1883 (wed by the Brooklyn minister William Wilder, and witnessed by Flora's mother and sister); he worked as a driver for the H.F. Lillibridge Cracker Factory in Minneapolis. By 1885, the couple moved to Brooklyn Township next to his wife's family. His occupation was salesman.

Did he succeed?

Star Tribune

Wed, Apr 29, 1891 ·Page 5

Aug 15, 1892, Page Yaw's bid was read aloud with other bids for disposal of garbage. His bid had an attached petition from the Market Gardeners of Brooklyn asking that Yaw be awarded the contract for taking from the city all such material as may be used as a fertilizer, claiming Mr. Yaw is a practical  gardener, and that it would be a mutual benefit to the City and them to have the contract awarded to him. In November, the contract was awarded to a different person after a lot of political drama by the Mayor and the Republican party.

According to the Minneapolis City Directory, Page and his family moved from Brooklyn Center to the corner of 43rd and Colfax, Minneapolis in 1893.

On February 1, 1898, "Wales & Yaw" submitted a bid to the city for disposition of garbage...the garbage included dead animals, refuse from the Commission House and Butcher Shop. This indicates that Yaw continued in some way a garbage disposal business.

After thoughts: Originally, the assumption was that Yaw would only be collecting vegetable matter from the farmers market, but that was not the situation. It included manure from street sweeping and liveries, and "night soil". Night soil was the crap removed from privies nightly; see The 19th Century Night Soil Men Who Carted Away America's Waste   Another interesting read is A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash.

Also, waste collection and Yaw's time, was the cutting edge of what cities around the country were dealing with. An interesting read is The Politics of Trash - How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890 -1929.