PAPER TOWELS.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1366, 17 February 1912, Page 9

PAPER TOWELS.

♦ Holler towels aro being forcibly ftbolished from all American institutions. Other countries, especially Germany, aro now following the American lead. .Roller towels, or any other towels that are used by two or more pooplo without being washed, aro now considered dirty. It is not that they may carry disease, though that is possible, but the general progress of society and the increase of refinement amongst all classes cause us to look askance at things that our grandparents took as part of the ordinary facts of life. So the roller towel must go, and the question arises: What is to take its place?

Tho most obvious way of providing towels i 9 to give each person a clean one, hut this entails an enormous waste and expense. It is no good washing the towel unless the washing is thorough. Sprinkling and ironing may mako it look clean, but to cive it a real sterilising wash is another matter. The caustic soda and alkaline silicates of the laundries do their cleaning very efficiently, but if every towel wore to spend six or seven times as long in the hot chemicals as it does at present, its life would bo a comparatively short one. . Even the 'us© of disinfectants would need, in most eases, a prolonged washing out with water afterwards, so it seems as though tlio roller towel would scon bo followed by many others; at any rate, the present breed of towel is about to depart from our public lavatories, and who knows? Perhaps there may be an entire revolution in onr methods of getting tho water off our skin after washing. In Canada and the United States paper towels have been introduced into many of tho schools, clubs, hotels, and public lavatories. In Sacramento towels made of mpor are introduced by order into tho High School; the School Board of Ottawa, lias put paper towels and cups into all its public buildings.

Germany has taken np the matterseriously. At a recent congress of the German Public Bath Association a competition was opened, which is thus described in tho current number of the "Medical Officer"—"Three prizes were offered for a good paper towel ,and tho winning specimens will be introduced into schools, railway stations, restaurants —indeed, into all places where peonle congregate and require somo apparatus for drying newly-washed hands."