Handbasket department plus factoid

We're sending the ruins of our industrial past to help other nations erect the beginnings of their industrial futures. The entire text of "American Scrap" (by John Seabrook; The New Yorker; January 11) is not on line but it's certainly worth paying for a newsstand issue, new or used, just to read this. Many of the terms used in the scrap trade are one-word creations devised during the age of the telegram, in order to save space and therefore money.