Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-03-21
THE MODERN LAUNDRY.
Some Timely Comments on It's Numerou
Evils and Dangers.

Evils and Dangers.
Into the average boarding house or
apartment building enters the laundress
or the humber washerwomau. Where
she comes from, her own condition and
habits are, as n general thing, a matter Of
absolute Indifference to her customers
That she is very poor they all know. No
one engages in the exhaustive labor of
washing and ironing unless she is in
needy circumstances. The commercial
habit OF getting work done at the lowest
rates, observes the american analyst, in
sures her abject poverty and low sur
roundings. The woman who charges 81 %
per dozen TO live in decencv is always
crowded out by her who charges 81 a
dozen, and lives in a cheap ton ement, and
she in turn by the daughter of misery
who does the same work for seventy-five
cents and lives, of necessity, in a dilapi-
dated howell or the cellar of some rookery
in the awful slums of the metropolis.
Yet 1t is in these places that the
great infectious and contagious dis.
eases find their hot-bed and home.
and here that simple ailments assume the
malignant and typhoid forms which at
times render them so formidable. The
former type is represented by smallpox,
diphtheria, Group, scarlet fever and
ophthalmia; and the latter by measles,
scarla tina, varioloid, chicken-pox and
mumps. The slightest reference to the
tables of mortality and disease, compiled
by the boards Of health in the great cities,
will show that the danger from disease in
low tenements varies from ten to five hun
dred times as great as that which obtains
in respectable dwelling houses. One case,
given some time since by the BROOKLYN
health auth critics, will illustrate this very
forcibly. A washerwoman who resided
in the canal district, South BROOKLYN,
performed the laundry work Of a wealthy
family in Bedford, and a we'll to do fam.
lily in Central Brooklyn. Malignant
diphtheria broke out in the dirty tenement
where she lived. Two days after its APP
pearance, and before its terrible char
acter became known to the official in
spectors, she carried home the weeks
wash to the two customers mentioned.
Within forty EIGHT hours the disease, in
its worst form, broke out in both
households. In the former il
killed two children and left one child
and the mother invalids for more than
six months; in the latter it carried away
a brilliant boy, the only child of the FAM
lily, nd nearly destroyed both parents.
1t was stamped out in the two homes or
rather confined to the damage stated,
but in the tenement it RACED and swept
away fifteen lives. All these possibilities
OF danger, disease and death are calmly
overlooked by the guests OF the boarding
house, the apartment building, or the
old-fashioned home, who patronize the
| poor washerwoman, aud who, by having
starv alton rates for her work. compel her
! to live in these Infamous surroundings.
aud be inEoluntarily the bearer of disease
and suffering to every Threshold she
crosses.
But this is only the beginning of the
evil. She passes from ustomer to GUS
toner, collecting here half dozen and
there dozen pieces, 1t makes no differ.
ence to her, poor creature, what may hs
the condition OF the fabrics she receives
or OF their wearers and owners. One has
an incurable blood disease whose CONTACT
Gus germs infect all his underwear: an
other, skin complaint that is transfera-
bic without difficulty; a third. un-
consciously. has upon him some para site
form OF life whose ova are easily dstach-
able from the hair or skin, as the case
may be; fourth suffers from some infec-
tious illness, IN whatever stage il matters
not, All OF their linens and woolens.
soiled. filthy, reeking or deadly, are piled
into a huge bundle, Hacked closely. till
they are almost solid mass, and then
YEARLY 1tOted' 70 the pitiful den she
calls her home Here, II she is ccessfuI,
she has two " ash boilers, one for linens
and cottOns and another for woolens. In
unsuccessful, which e nine times out Of
ten the case. one battered tin vessel does
service for all The linens and cottons
are then marked and thrown I'm the boiler
pellmell, boiled with a cheap soap. some
times half rottsd, ALWAYS strongly alka-