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$2,302, but exceeded substantially the $1,706 average of the Southeast. Service-industry workers covered by unemployment compensation laws averaged $1,725 a year in the three Middle Western States (a close approximation to the national average), compared to only $1,232 in the Southeast.

City Samples

In selecting the cities to be surveyed in each of the two regions, no effort was made to obtain a scientific sample representative of the region as a whole nor of the individual States within each region. Rather a variety of individual cities differing in size and type were chosen in each region. Within each city, however, a representative cross-section or all of the power laundries of the family service type employing 25 or more employees were visited by Women's Bureau agents. Hand laundries, institutional laundries, and power laundries specializing in linen supply or other commercial trade were omitted. The selection of establishments was made following consultation with employers' associations and union officials. Only a representative group of laundries was visited in the larger cities, whereas in the smaller places, wherever possible, all the laundries of the specified size and type were visited. The group of 258 establishments included in the survey are therefore representative of 38 selected cities-92 laundries were located in 14 midwestern cities, and 166 laundries, in 24 southeastern cities. These laundries employed a total of over 21,000 workers, almost three-fourths of whom, or about 16,000, were

women.

Most of the laundries surveyed (about four-fifths of them) offered dry cleaning as well as laundry service. Dry cleaning business usually accounted for about 10 to 20 percent of the receipts of midwestern laundries, but about 25 to 40 percent (and sometimes much more) in southeastern laundries. The survey, however, was confined solely to the laundry operations. Employers were interviewed, pay-roll records were transcribed, and inspections made in the plants to obtain information on such subjects as earnings, productive-labor costs, prices, productivity, hours, and working conditions.

The survey was directed to the conditions affecting women production workers only, who, over 14,000 in number, constituted 84 percent of all laundry production workers and almost two-thirds of the total laundry employment in the 258 establishments. Wage data gathered in the survey were based for the most part on the week ended July 15, 1945. In order to have data comparable from city to city, the same pay-roll week was used in each city, except where that week was not normal. The Bureau of Labor Statistics cooperated with the Women's Bureau in obtaining the wage data.

Although most of the laundries were incorporated, their type of business organization differed materially in each region. The midwestern laundries, on the whole, operated as corporations (about four-fifths of them did), whereas in the southeastern cities, only about, half were incorporated, and the others were either partnerships or individual proprietorships. Approximately one-sixth of the laundries were reported to be units of a chain of two or more establishments. Sometimes the separate units of the chain were located in the same

city; some establishments, however, were parts of chains with units in different cities of the same or other States.

Table 1 presents the cities included in the survey and the number of laundries, with their employment, visited in each city.

Table 1.-Number of Power Laundries Visited and Their Employment, by Locality, 1945

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NATURE OF OCCUPATIONS

The occupations found in a laundry can be grouped into three major divisions. Most important numerically are the production employees a group comprising all workers engaged in actual laundering operations. About 78 percent of all laundry workers employed in the establishments surveyed were production workers. Women predominate in this group. Constituting not less than two-thirds of the production workers in any city, women formed 80 to 90 percent of the productive work forces in most cities. The second occupational division covers routemen (drivers) who made up 10 percent of the total employees, and the third division (12 percent of the total) covers all other employees, including office, power-plant, and repair-maintenance workers. Normally women are not employed as routemen but a few were found working in this occupation in 1945 in an Atlanta and in a Savannah laundry.

The 258 laundries surveyed employed 14,065 women production workers who worked at almost every production job found in the industry. The relationship of these jobs to one another and the contribution of each to the completed laundry bundle can be seen by tracing a bundle through the various processes in an average laundry. Let us start with the homemaker who, gathering soiled articles, finds that her bundle contains some flatwork (sheets, pillow cases, towels), wearing apparel (shirts, socks, handkerchiefs, pajamas), and some specialty items such as a wool blanket and curtains. The customer itemizes the articles on the list accompanying her bundle and specifies the desired type of service from a variety offered. She might request that, after washing, all the items be returned damp; or that only the flatwork be ironed and the wearing apparel returned ready for her to iron at home; or that all articles in the bundle should be ironed by the laundry. If this homemaker holds a full-time job, the likelihood is she will have little time or energy to iron her laundry at home and will perhaps request "family-finished service," which means that all articles in the bundle are to be washed and "finished" (ironed) on machine presses. Any necessary "touch-up" will be done by handironers, and menders will repair torn articles. Upon being returned to the customer, all articles in a family-finished bundle are ready for

use.

The bundle is picked up at the customer's home by a routeman who delivers it by truck to the laundry plant. If the customer had preferred "cash and carry" service, she herself could have taken the bundle directly to a "call office" at the plant or to a branch office where it would be picked up by a driver and brought to the plant.

The marking department starts the bundle through the productive processes. Here, the bundle is weighed by a weigher or marker, and the marker opens it and lists and identifies (marks) the individual articles so that items following different courses through the laundry may be later reassembled. The distinguishing mark placed on the articles may be visible or "invisible" (visible only in ultra-violet light) inking, or it may be a removable label sewed or stapled to the article. A classifier separates the bundle, putting flatwork in one group, shirts

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in another, specialty items in a third, and all other articles into separate groups according to fabric and color. Each group is put into an individual net bag, and each bag is marked with a large pin numbered with the "mark" assigned the customer.

The laundry is conveyed in carts to the washroom where a loader puts it into washing machines, often called "washwheels." In some

[graphic]

WOMEN OPENING BUNDLES OF SOILED LAUNDRY. NOTE FLUORESCENT LIGHTING AND INDIVIDUAL AIR VENTS WHICH BRING FRESH AIR INTO EACH BOOTH.

plants the markers and classifiers, working on a mezzanine floor, drop the laundry down chutes into the washing machines. A washman, in charge of washing operations, admits the washing solution into the machines which wash and rinse the laundry. A puller removes the wet laundry from the washers and dumps it into a chain basket or perforated cage, in turn lowered into an extractor-a centrifugal drying machine which expels water from the washed articles. After this operation, the extractor operator, lifting the laundry from the extractor, places it into carts which are sent to different sections of the plant. Some articles are then tumbled instead of ironed. Bath towls, for example, are tumbled to remove creases without leveling the nap. The tumbler operator loads, operates, and unloads the tumbling machine. Other articles are sent to the finishing departments. Sheets and pillow cases are sent from the washroom to the flatworkers, an ironing crew composed of three groups of workers. Two shakers pick up the wet pieces of flatwork, shake them to uncrumple them, and place them on a rack. Two feeders place the pieces on the flatwork ironer in position for the ribbons to carry them through the machine. Two folders (also called catchers or receivers) receive the ironed flatwork and fold it.

Handkerchiefs are finished on a small machine, often operated by one person, the handkerchief ironer, who shakes out the handkerchiefs,

spreads them on the ironer, removes and folds the ironed pieces. Shirts are finished on a group of specialized presses-a shirtline. The number of shirtline operatives in a unit varies, depending on the type of equipment used and the degree of specialization practiced. The operators perform successive operations on the same shirt. Each member of the shirtline crew operates one or more of the pressescollar-and-cuff press, bosom press, body press, sleever, collar former, and yoker. One operator folds the shirts, and a hand ironer may touch them up.

Other garments such as pajamas and housedresses are finished on garment presses in the wearing-apparel finishing section where the presses are operated by press operators who may tend more than one press. Socks are pulled over a heated sock form by a sock ironer who removes the socks when they are dry and free of creases and who also sorts them.

The specialty-finishing department handles such items as blankets and curtains. The customer's woolen blanket, possibly hand washed and already extracted, is sent to the finishing department where a carding-machine operator feeds the blanket into a carding machine which brushes and raises the nap of the blanket as it passes between the rolls, or where a carder brushes the blanket with a hand card. Curtains are dried on a large frame (curtain drier) onto which the stretcher-drier operators press the curtains. Fluted edges are shaped with a pair of corrugated irons by the fluting-machine operator, and ruffled edges are finished by the hand ironer.

As each group of the customer's articles is completed in the various finishing departments, it is sent to the sorters (assemblers) who assemble all the items belonging to the customer. A checker examines the bundle to ascertain that nothing is missing. The bundle, after being packaged by a wrapper, is sent to the delivery department where a routeman picks it up and delivers it to the owner.

As can be seen from the foregoing description, much of the plant's floor space is occupied by presses, which, being steam-heated, generate heat and humidity often causing considerable discomfort, especially in hot weather. Workers in the marking department are subjected to the unpleasantness of handling soiled clothing. Employees in the sorting department must adhere to high standards of accuracy so that customers' complaints due to missing items or failure to follow special requests are reduced to a minimum.

OCCUPATIONAL DISTRIBUTION OF WOMEN

The women production workers perform almost all of the jobs in marking, finishing, and sorting departments. At the time of the survey in 1945, about 5 percent of the women also assisted in the washing department where the jobs are normally held by men. In laundries of the southeastern cities it was typical to find Negro women in the finishing departments and white women in the marking and sorting departments.

The degree of job specialization found in individual laundries varied with the size of the establishment; the larger laundries had more specialized job break-downs, whereas the smaller ones often assigned employees to different jobs during the course of a day or

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