The Sherman Courier
Wednesday, August 15, 1917
pg. 8
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
SHERMAN STEAM LAUNDRY
established 1888
The
value of a business to a community is not measured by the profits it
makes, nor by the amount of investment, but rather by the revenues of
money it brings into the community from the outside world and by the
number of people to whom it gives employment at a living and proper
wage, and perhaps no business in Sherman measures up to this standard
to a fuller degree than the Sherman Steam Laundry, owned by the Sherman
Steam Laundry Company, of which Lon McKown is president and Eugene
Cherry, secretary and manager.
This business was established in 1888
by Ben McBride. It was in 1891 that Eugene Cherry came into the
business, and Mr. McKown came in in 1893. At the time these two
Sherman-raised gentlemen took charge of the business, it gave
employment to ten or a dozen people and the work was done by hand, and
perhaps no business in Sherman has undergone a greater change or made
more progress than the Sherman Steam Laundry.
This company now has
at the corner of Lamar and Rusk streets one of the most modern laundry
plants in all this country, erected in 1901, giving regular employment
to over ninety people, with a payroll of more than $1000 per week, or
more than $50,000 per year, and their volume of business last year
exceeded $122,000.00, the greater part of this business having been
brought to Sherman from the 125 to 150 towns of Texas and Oklahoma in
which this laundry has agencies.
The name of Sherman and the Sherman
Steam Laundry is carried into thousands of the best homes of Texas and
Oklahoma week after week and year after year delivering to these people
a service which advertises and reflects credit not only on the people
who render this service but also upon this city, and the people as a
whole, and it is institutions like this, in the many lines of service,
that makes a city and a happy and prosperous people.
Comparatively
few people have any correct idea of the real character of laundry work
or of the magnitude of the laundry business. Government
statistics show that the money invested in laundries in the United
States at this time is the third largest in amount of all the
industrial enterprises, and the character of the work done by the
employes of modern laundries is indeed vastly different from the
popular conception thereof.
Instead of the wash-tub drudgery carried
in mind by most people, the employes of the Sherman Steam Laundry do no
drudgery whatsoever - not even the "washermen" drudge. The
washing is done by men - and not by women - thanks to the modern
laundry, and all the heavier work about the laundry - what little there
is - is done by men. Most of the ironing is done by women - but
you ought to see them iron - it's a picnic, even as compared with the
modern gas or electric iron in home use.
Of the ninety to one
hundred people employed by the Sherman Steam Laundry in and about the
plant, possibly sixty per cent are women and girls and the balance are
men, and while you may not have thought of it, they do very little work
on Monday and very little on Saturday, and some of them none, on Monday
or Saturday, and the slavery of the old time wash tub and "smoothing
iron" has been entirely regulated to the past.
The modern laundry is
one of the greatest blessings of modern times, and as above figures
show, the business has grown in importance far beyond the popular
conception concerning it, and the time is perhaps not far distant when
the cleansing of all family wearing apparel will be done by the
laundries, and when this time shall have come, all womankind will no
doubt raise their voices in one grand chorus of praise to those who
have wrought this great change.
The modern laundry, like all good
things, is the result of thought, invention and progress, and it is to
men like Lon McKown and Eugene Cherry and their associates in the
business thoughout America that the good women of our land and the
public in general are looking for further and greater improvement,
service and relief, albeit now they owe these men a debt of gratitude
for the great relief already brought through modern laundry equipment
and service.
The City of Sherman duly acknowledges to Mr. McKown and
Mr. Cherry their obligation and gratitude for the great public service
they have rendered during the past quarter century, and the splendid
institution they have built up which has done so much towards
advertising this city as well as to increase its revenues and give
regular employment to many of its people, and the city needs and wants
more business enterprises like THE SHERMAN STEAM LAUNDRY.
The
Cherry family was active in the laundry business in Sherman as early as
1888. In 1895, the Sherman Steam Laundry (SSL) was incorporated, with
Eugene Cherry (1864–1943) as secretary-treasurer. Eugene had begun as a
driver of the firm's two-horse delivery trucks in 1888. A new building
was erected in 1901. Eugene became Sherman Steam Laundry president in
1929. He owned the whole company in 1940, when he retired. He was an
officer of both the Texas Laundry Owners Association and the American
Institute of Laundrying. Eugene's half-brother, Luther Cherry, worked
at the Sherman Steam Laundry until 1922, when he left to found Snow
White Laundry in Denison.
In
the late 1970s, a man from California had remodeled the Steam Laundry
Building into offices. At the end of 1990, Karen and Tom Shields
bought it. Professionals - lawyers, accountants, doctors,
dentists, counselors and Tom's insurance business - occupied the
suites. A carriage house out back expanded over the years to
accommodate more tenants. At the west end of the laundry
building, one space remained unused: the former boiler room. In
August 2005, Tom and Karen began work to turn the old boiler room into
a coffee house, which opened December 2005.
Sherman
History
Susan Hawkins
© 2024
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