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November-December, 194'.
diamond ring lost by a woman in Ohio was found and returned to her by a local laundry. In both instances, the rings were discovered in the pockets of garments.
Jewelry and money are among the many items found in garments by sorters in laundry plants who make a point of emptying out pockets to avoid damage to clothing, as well as for the purpose of returning any mis' placed valuables to their customers. A lipstick left in the pocket of a dress, for instance, can ruin many hundreds of dollars worth of clothing. Razor blades or broken glass can tear shirts and linens. The laundry manager of a hospital in California once exhibited a large collection of such things as hypodermic needles, broken glass tumblers, medicine bottles and scalpels which had been deposited in linen hampers over a period of just a few months.
Laundry bundles also have been known to contain toys, shoes, eyeglasses, books, negotiable bonds, social security cards, love letters, pencils, fountain pens, watches, compacts, false teeth and babies' milk bottles filled with milk. One laundry plant even had the unusual experience of hunting for a pair of white mice belonging to a customer. The mice got out of the bundle and an all-out effort by the laundry employees was necessary to round them up. The rodents finally were caught and returned to their owner.
Such bizarre events, however, do not disrupt the carefully planned work schedule of a laundry plant. The heavy flow of linen, shirts and other clothing going through the
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laundry must be processed rapidly and without interruption to be ready for customers on time. The steady flow of production also is essential tc keep costs down and profit possible. Typical large city laundries handle from 35,000 to 50,000 pieces a day, and some handle more. One large city laundry does about 10,000 men's shirts alone in a day. All of these shirts are finished or pressed by 36 girls working in teams of four each with the most modern equipment. Each girl averages about 35 shirts an hour.
Modern laundry plants are highly mechanized and set up on an assembly line basis for smooth and efficient work flow. Plant layout is usually carefully designed to eliminate extra motion and back-tracking. Many plants use belt conveyors, overhead cables and chutes to carry laundry from one operation to another.
Equipment in a laundry includes washwheels, extractors, gigantic flatwork ironers, drying tumblers, shirt presses and many other specialized pieces of equipment. The large washwheels are usually self-loading and unloading, and capable of handling hundreds of pounds of linen at a time. Many of these machines are pushbutton controlled with the formula pre-set, and the injection of soap, sour and bluing taking place automatically. Extractors, large cylindrical, tublike machines, spin around at 800 revolutions a minute, removing all the water from the linen and clothing by cen-l trifugal force. Huge flatwork ironers can dry and press sheets and tablecloths at the rate of 900 an hour.
When a bundle comes into a laun