San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1896-11-06
LoNDON'S WASHING.
Nearly All Is Done Mt 5000 Steam and
Electric Laundries.

Nearly All Is Done ut 5000 steam and
| Electric Laundries.
The satirical literature of the second
and third quarters of the nineteenth
| century is thick with shafts leveled
against three pet grievances of the mid
die class of those years of grace-name-
ly, cold mutton, mothers-in-law, and
the miseries of washing day. Since that
benighted period the chef of commerce
has discovered at least so ways of spoil
ing wholesome good mutton; mothers
in-law we have still with us-though
not necessarily in the form of nuisances
while the miseries of washing day
have been so far mitigated by machin-
cry as to be reduced to the rank of
minor inconvenience. Indeed, washing
day has been banished from all but
comparatively humble homes, and the
more fortunate householder sends the
family linen to be treated at huge
steam laundry, where the heat is pro-
duced by electricity and the elaborate
engines are driven by electricity. Ion
don and the suburbs contain about 5000
invested capital of 100000 to e.
100000. The very largest employ from
200 to 500 hands, representing a turn
over of from 6 500 to e 700 per wook.
These monster laundries, in reckoning
their expenses and profits, allow so per
cent. for labor, per cent. for fuel and
materials, and As per cent. for the cost
of and deterioration in machinery, rent,
taxes, rates, management and a return
on capital employed. In cities and
large towns the time appears to have
passed forever when a copper in the
back kitchen, washing tub, cor
rugated board and a few fat irons
for a first-class laundress; and the
large laundries, springing up with the
celebrity of mushroom growth declare
that in washing clothes hand labor
cannot compare for cleanliness and
economy of means to an end with ma
chinery. 1t is not, therefore, surpris-
ing to find laundry, engineering and
sanitary eXhibition-the fourth of it's
kind-fourishing exceedingly at the
Agricultural hall, Islington.
All the wide floor space is given over
TO machinery in motion, ironing ma
chimes, air-propellers, hydro-extroct-
ors, disinfecting, tumbling and separat-
ing machines, portable boilers, fans for
ventilating and drying purposes, pres
sure washing machines, improved blow
ers, gas irons, wash tub ranges, steep
ing, rinsing and blueing tanks, dry
ing horses, ironing stoves, smokeless
combustion furnaces, artesian wells,
and soap and soda, lime, starch End
blue of every aspect, quality and price.
Enthusiasts in the hall proudly beast
that there is hardly an engineer or
chemist of consequence, practicing two
callings in these islands, not engaged
in working out some process or other
connected with the laundry trade. And
all this invention, talent and enterprise
is essentially Of modern growth. tap
pears to have reached maturity within
the past dozen years or so, necessitated,
in the first place, by factory acts, and
encouraged to its liveliest manifesto
tions by the public health act of 1891.
These intelligent custodians of whirl-
ing, hydro-extractors and American
shirt starchers will tell you that wash
ing was never properly done until now;
that the old-or, rather, young-Pa-
risian blanchisseuse was not much bet
ter than bungler, and that the pretty
English laundrymaid of the long ago
could not be trusted nowadays to prop
erly wash a pocket handkerchief. They,
at least, have no belief in the CONT
mental rustic washerwoman dabbling
the family wash in clear and running
stream. The surroundings may be pic
turesque-the grass green, the poplars
bending to the wind, the upland fair
with patches of sunlight and racing
cloud shadows-but, from their cast
iron and revolving band point of view,
the result is Observation-Disclosures Tele-
graph.