Nonessential?

> In Detroit laundries appealed in paid newspaper ads to the public to do their washing at home.

> Many Los Angeles husbands spent Sundays helping wives do the wash.

> New customers for diaper service in Washington, D.C. were accepted only on a doctor's prescription, certifying that the mothers were too ill to wash diapers themselves, or on priorities for war workers.

> The secretary-treasurer of a large, labor-short laundry in Portland, Ore. swept out the premises each morning.

> In Cleveland one company limited its customers to three shirts a week.

The laundry business, biggest U.S. service industry, is unable to cope with war. And summer, its busiest season, is hard upon it. As it valiantly tries to keep the nation's clothes clean, its profits fall, customer ill will has mounted, the number of lost socks and misplaced towels has vastly increased. In the last two months 100 U.S. laundries went out of business.

Increased Wartime Demand. In addition to the primary fact that U.S. men & women are busier than ever, often at occupations which dirty their clothes more quickly, there are three main reasons why laundry sales have increased from 1941's $489,000,000 to 1943's estimated $600,000,000 : 1 ) more women leave their homes every day for offices and factories; 2) domestic help grows increasingly scarce; 3) new washing machines are unprocurable.

Decreased Laundry Resources. Price ceilings, as now fixed, work against most laundries. In many a large city near mili tary centers, Army & Navy have commandeered whole laundries. New laundry machinery and even replacement parts are difficult or impossible to get.

But all these troubles pale before the greatest laundry difficulty: manpower. Even though 75% of laundry workers were always women, no laundry now knows from one day to the next how many employes will appear for work. Labor turn over has run as high as 500% a year; inefficient workers have halved the laundry's output per man-hour while doubling the number of customers' complaints. Even if laundries were allowed to raise wages they could not compete with the higher wages paid by war industry.

Solutions. The laundries want them selves designated as essential or "locally needed" industry so that their help can be frozen (this has already been done in 39 cities). They declare they can do the irreducible minimum of the nation's washing only if they abandon all frills and "de luxe" services for the duration.

For the U.S. citizen the meaning was clear: shirts will be worn longer, sheets changed less often.

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