CORPORATIONS: Song of the Shirt

Cluett, Peabody & Co. Inc. is the biggest U.S. maker of brand-name shirts (Arrow), but its largest single source of profit is not from shirts at all. It is from "Sanforizing," a process for pre-shrinking fabrics now used for almost all U.S. cotton clothing. Last week, Cluett, Peabody invited a group of bigwigs to its Troy (N.Y.) home to look at a new $1,000,000 research laboratory and two new processes designed to 1) prevent wool from "matting," thus making it easily washable, and 2) pre-shrink rayon as Sanforizing does cotton.* Cluett,...