Care of Clothing: ....Keep at hand simple non-explosive cleansers, Fuller's earth, cake magnesia, borax, blotters, ammonia, sponge, some soft clothes and a small bowl.
The explosive cleansers would include gasoline which women did indeed use to clean clothing that could not be washed in 1928. Which is when Laura I. Baldt wrote this in Dressmaking Made Easy for the McCall Company. Fuller’s earth is a kind of powdered gray clay used to get grease stains out of clothing and cake magnesia is a chemical compound also against stains. Borax is a chemical compound used as a detergent, and you have doubtless heard of ammonia which is used in household cleansers. Baldt taught in Household Arts at Teachers College at Columbia University. Here it sounds more like household chemistry, but many early books on making clothing and running a household contained far more extensive lists of chemicals used to clean everything from fabric to feathers.
