1955 " Modern Way to Iron"

[sudsman]

"modern" hospital laundry

 

[sudsman]

And the "Modern way to fold"

Trumatic folding system,

folder folded any size sheet with 2 primary (length wise ) folds and the girl then made the final crossfolds.. Cross folders were not sold until the early 60's

 

[toploader55]

Thanks Sudsman

I love Machinery like This.

 

[frigilux]

I love women in sensible shoes, LOL!

 

[douglasdc6]

I love those old preheat fluorescent fixtures with the ballast on top

 

[spiceman1957]

My back is hurting

just looking at these pictures. I wonder what these poor women were getting paid? $.75 - $1.00 per hour?
John

 

[maytag63]

Minimum wage was .75 cents per hour in 1955. It went up to $1.00 in 1956 and stayed that way until 1961 when it went up to a whopping $1.15.

 

[sudsman]

Most Laundries paid just a little above min.wage.

So they most likely got $1.00 / hour I know the washmen in that time always got a whopping 1.50 /hr and a plant manager usually made about 125.00 a week

 

[tolivac]

Very interesting equipment-like the pinstriping on some of the machines and the art deco styling.and yes the ext ballast lamp fixtures-theres even a few of those in my workplace in the areas behind the transmitters.and the fixtures have the eggcrate diffusers.

 

[aussie-plugs]

Purchasing Power

So if the minimum wage was $1.00 in 1956, that helps put a lot of the pricing we see on some of the POD shots into perspective.

Some (most?) of the washing machines are more than $100 (more than two week's wages, before taxes are taken into consideration).

Vaccum cleaner around $60 ... 1.5 week's wages.

Think about whether you'd spend 1.5 times your weekly wage on such an appliance nowadays. Or, think about what you could buy for 1.5 times your weekly wage now. The changes that modern manufacturing (and, yes, cheap Chinese labour) have brought are amazing.

 

[launderess]

Which explains whey such things were called "major appliances",and were expected to give service, not the cheap throw away tat one has today.

Consider also familes were larger then, so a housewife was doing lots of laundry,thus the machines got a good work out, again it was expected that such "normal" conditions were not going to kill the thing in five years.

Cost of laundry appliances explains why there were so many laundromats then, and or huge market for resale of second hand washing machines. While today many would turn up their noses at being given a "used" washer, back then you took what you could get and was thankful.

 

[qsd-dan]

Think about whether you'd spend 1.5 times your weekly wage on such an appliance nowadays. Or, think about what you could buy for 1.5 times your weekly wage now.

I'd ecstatically pay MUCH more than that if I could obtain the quality of yesteryear!! 1.5 times a weeks pay is next to nothing when the item(s) last 40+ years!