A Brief Excursion Into The Obvious

As a sort of bleak handmaiden to the article on federal bureaucracy in our August, 1974, issue, we would like to reveal the results of a recent survey undertaken by the Agriculture Department. With admirable thoroughness the department interviewed more than two thousand mothers with children under fourteen years of age in order to determine whether the mothers preferred children’s clothing that requires no ironing to clothing that does need to be ironed. The conclusion, published in a 113-page research report entitled “Mothers’ Attitudes Toward Cotton and Other Fibers in Children’s Lightweight Clothing,” is: yes indeed, mothers do prefer children’s clothes that don’t need ironing. This none-too-startling revelation cost the taxpayer $113,147.