Police held responsibility over many systems in society, even street sweeping.

Others had different priorities; when he opened the floor to discussion, the popular subjects were street sweeping and garbage collection.

By the spring of 1990, he added, a special "clean team" program of sweeping streets would "just about disappear."

The business collapsed in 1929, and after that, his father did whatever he could to survive, his son recalls, including sweeping streets.

Of course sweeping streets takes money and an army of dedicated street cleaners.

"She's probably complaining about the street sweeping," Mr. Harrison said.

"They have also worked with local officials to increase street sweeping, which reduces runoff into the water."

Such people, she said, have often been jailed or required to accept menial jobs like sweeping streets.

He considered everything from sweeping streets to chauffeuring.

But there are also sweeping arterial streets that carry the tourist and business traffic to the town center.