Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1914 — FOLLOWING THE ... LAUNDRY BAG... [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FOLLOWING THE ... LAUNDRY BAG...

By FOSTER GILROY

(Copyright by Laundry men’s National As- —_ -—. sociatlon of America.] T""™ HIS question concerns every housewife in America: jjgppgj "Do you actually know what • '< ' J happens to the contents of your laundry-bag after it leaves your home?" In other words, have you ever thought of the conditions under which your clothes are laundered? Have .you"ever seen the inside of a modern American laundry—are you acquainted with its “spick and spanness," its immaculate cleanliness, sanitation, and ventilation? The old-fashioned wash-day is an echo of the past, a memory that had gbest be left to undisturbed forgottenuess. Question any student of economics about the leading industries of America, and he will glibly rattle off figures without end‘on the output of coal, iron, and steel, the manufacture of household necessities, and the ascendency of agriculture. Ask him about the laundry industry, and you have him stumped for reply! Possibly he may laugh at your te-merity-washing shirts and collars, indeed! How does this figure as an industry ? But it does figure as an industry, and a very important, one. In the first place, the capital invested in the laundry business places it among the leading half dozen In the list of American industries. Every week the American people turn over millions as the price of wearing clean linen. It seeids high time, then, that the American housewife should take a deep and abiding interest in the ultimate destination of her laundry-bag. To the average household the “laundry” consists of a vague establishment somewhere in the neighborhood, the chief opinion being largely influenced by the degree of popularity of the person who calls for and delivers the “wash.” His semiweekly visits make of him a sort of fixture, and more importance is attached to this

messenger than- to the institution it self. —-i y.v _ If the work and service are good, the is accordingly popular. “John” is the one who gets the credit. “He is the best laundryman we ever had.” If the work and service are bad, John gets called down for it; and if this keeps up, he probably forgets to call any more, and a new “laundryman” is engaged. ' Nine times out of ten the ,house keeper does not even know the street address or phone number of her laun dry, mpeh less what is done with her wash after it reaches there. This article is written for the purpose of arousing interest in the laundry itself; the driver is only an Incident, one small spoke in the large wheel of laundry service. It so happens that man has been muckraking his laundry since way back in the dim ages when time began. It probably started In the stone age, when the fad was to cleanse the family wearing apparel by beating it between a couple of flat stones, at the edge of some near-by stream. Only a shirt of mail could stand many trips to the primeval laundry, and one could judge that its luster must have been dimmed, rather than Improved. k. And so it is that modern times came honestly by its propensity to “blame It on the laundry,” no matter whether that much-abused institution was at fauit or not. Some one bad to “catch it,” so why not the defenseless laundry? Defenseless? Let us see. Little bodies of laundrymen began to meet here and there for the interchange of ideas. They were keen, intelligent business men. Soon they got together into a big National Association, In order that these ideas might assume a broader scope. What Is the result? The modern American Inundry of the present day is representative of the highest order of thought and ingenuity of mechanical and electrical engineering: it is a scienoeftnd an art combined. It employs. In the production of ita

Table Linen Snow White From Up to the Minute Laundry.