The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-02-14
ALL MAY BE CLEANLY
ADVENT OF THE PUBLIC BATH HOUSE EARNESTLY DESIRED.
London Has Made Decided Success of a Similar Entsrprise-C Clothes
 May Be Laundered at a, Tri- .. fling Monetary Cost.
BrOnklNn lNlgle.

New York regards itself as an up-to- date metropolis, and ye. in many re- spects, New York Is painfully behind the times. Certain public .conyeniences that old world cities have regarded as mat ter of course for half a century and that slow-going towns like Boston and Phila- deiphia and little one-horse Western towns like Minneapolis have well estab- lished and in good working order New York has not yet gotten round to- New York has just one public bath that is actually in commission and of real util- ity and Is getting around to one or two more. But public wash-houses are as yet among the Improvements that are not even planned. although Boston has had one-not a very good one. but still a promise of better thlngs-for several years; some of the smaller western cities have built municipal laundries that do them credit. and Philadelphia, which Gotham regards as the synonym for slowness, has a, fine one, opened not very. long ago, and has found 1t so useful that another is planned. s.
 England Sets a Good Example.
 On the other side the mill pond, Eng land has public washhouses in nearly every large town-two or four or a half dozen of them in the biggest cities-and not a year goes by that che docs not open more. In Paris they have them. not so large as the English cnes in barges anchored on the Seine along the river front in the poorer districts. Everywhere that they exist 1t has been found that the people are quick to appreciate and use them. The newly opened public laundry in Philadelphia proved so imme- diately useful and to such an unexpected class that it was found necessary to im- mediately start a second for this class iv, arft A,,4 have been established has there been any lack of patronage ss:
 In England, where the public laundry originated. 1t Is regaroed as the natural complement of th> public bath and half of the public baths have public laundries under the same roof. In New York that would not be saying much, in England 1t means a good deal, for England be- lieves that it is civic economy to help tt people to keep clean and 1t was found that the people are willing to pay for the privilege of washing both them selves and their clothes. It has so many public baths that 1t has regular swim ming classes in it's public schools, which go once in 60 often to the nearest public bath for instruction And the nearest public bath Is distant anywhere from 200 yards to two miles. There Is not, appar- ently, from the school obard report on the subject, a public school in London that is not within reach-generally with in easy reach-of a public bath. And, as already noted. there are public wash houses under the same roof with a very large number of thesse batts. In Paris the laundries exist entirely apart from baths, mostly on the river front.
 Charges are Moderate.
 In all of these public laundries there !s a small charge for the convenience. In France 1t is ? sous an hour, a sou being about cent; in England it Is 1-2d to 2d for the first hour and more for the succeeding hours. Experience has prov ed that the working classes who patron ize the city laundries get their washing done and dried and ready to take home in an hour and a half to two hours and that the clothes are sweeter and cleaner than they could possibly get them if they did the work in their tenement house kitchens.
 It is one of the subjects which Dr. Tolman and his party of social explorers from the American Institute of Social Service particularly looked into during their trip abroad this summer. He has come home full of information and with good photographs of some of the public laundries of England. He says: Unless you have seen them you cannot at all appreciate how much they are needed and now greatly they facilitate the work woman can do in an hour what it would take her all day to do in the crowded tenement-house kitchen. And she can do 1t. infinitely better More over, having done 1t. she can so home to dry Kitchen, free from steam, with no smell of studs, no damp clothes hanging around. breeding disease and absorbing disease. and getting dirty even as they dry '-- -E ..- N--
 "At the public laundry she has every convenience and of the most modern type. She has plenty of hot ,water, in good clean tubs. She has cold water when she needs it, She does not have to wear herself out and her clothes out wringing them either by hand or the old fashioned wrfnger screwed to her tubs. Her clothes are wruhg mechanically by pressure in part, but mainly by centri- 1usal force and they come out partly dry and with no buttons torn from them in the process. They are then put into steam-drying vault and in five minutes are dry. They may then be taken home and ironed at the convenience of tbe washer or she may stay right there and iron them If she chooses with everything equally convenient for that.
 Better Than Public BatEs.
 Dr. Holman is what Is called a "crank, on the public bath question, but he says: The public laundry is perhaps a greater benefit to the people than the baths. It makes 1t possible to have all the laundry work done outside of the home at such a trifling cost that even the poorest can afford to pay for the advantage. Many tenements have no water supply on each