SHORTER SHIRTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1942, Page 4

SHORTER SHIRTS

OLD ONES “REBUILT’ INTO NEW. Millions of yards of cloth may be saved for Britain’s war purposes by a new idea for repairing old shirts. Instead of putting a patch over the worn or frayed part, which, apart from the difficulty of matching, would use up valuable material, the whole shirt is taken to pieces and rebuilt as new, except that it may be an inch or two shorter.. Not an inch of extra material is used, and the retail charges range from ls'9d for a new neckband to 4s for a new front.

A Czech and an Austrian, both antiNazis, have made this useful contribution to Britain’s war effort. They started work a few months ago in a single room back-street workshop with only two sewing machines. Laundries, men’s wear shops and drapers were quick to see the value of the idea and in .seven weeks the partners had 12 machines turning out 1,000 rebuilt shirts a week, so saving the country 2,500 yards of material right away. Now they have moved to larger premises, and the authorities, realising how much shipping space and labour can be saved by renovating old shirts instead of making new ones, have allowed the concern to purchase 12 more machines.

The inventor of the system is a Czech shirt manufacturer who introduced to Britain a process of shirtmaking which increased _ the rate of production six-fold. He joined forces with an Austrian who has been making shirts in Britain for some years'past. The partners estimate that if every man in Britain had two shirts repaired instead of buying new it would save 145,000,000 yards of cloth.