Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ... the shallow shore waters of lakes, and dry the cleansed articles upon the grass, and shrubbery of the banks. Savages do very little washing of any kind. A bath would probably prove fatal to the fur-clad Laplander or to a Greenland Eskimo. As people advance in civilization just in that, proportion do they devote attention to the linen decencies of life. It is only a few years since washing machines were generally introduced, and women of the preceding generation found washing days and ironing days the most laborious ones in their lives. The wash-tub, the pounding-barrel and the hand-wringing of garments constitute a slavish drudgery from which all would gladly be free. Women of the past generation also made their own soap--disagreeable work- from which relief has finally come through large soap manufacturing establishments. The aim of this chapter is to tell how laundry work is done on a large scale, and by machinery. Mechanical industry must steadily emancipate the race from a vast amount of this disagreeable drudgery. Laundry Work And Washers. Soiled linen from cars comes here every morning by express, and is delivered at the east end of the building in car-load lots. This linen is collected from six different depots in the city and is packed in heavy canvas bags, box-shaped, and about three feet long, three deep and two feet wide. These bags are all numbered and their contents properly billed to the laundry. The pieces, as taken from the bags, are recounted and thrown into a large pile upon the floor at the east end of the building, this floor being on a level with the bottom of a car standing on the track outside. Of course no effort is made to return to any car the same linen which is taken from it, but only a like amount of the...
