Business: Shirt Tale

Cloth shrinks because its fibres have been stretched taut during weaving and finishing, and under the gentle massage of washing the fibres swell, relax and partially return to their original shorter dimensions. This phenomenon has pained no one so much as the shirt-wearing male —that is, until 1928. That year Sanford Lockwood Cluett of Cluett, Peabody & Co. invented Sanforizing—a mechanical method of preshrinking cloth back to its true dimensions. No wearer of even a $2 shirt now need tug apoplectically to button his collar after it has been washed.

In brief, Sanforizing...

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