Born at Butler, IL, in 1888, Hollis E. Suits lived in St. Louis in 1919 and was the Secretary of the St. Louis Laundry Owners Association. In this role he saw and was seen by most of the33 owners of laundries in the city. The P. J. Halloran Laundry was a successful commercial laundry doing linens and towels for hotels and for Pullman cars. Its owner, Patrick J. Halloran, took special note of Suits' ability and at the same time believed there was a need for another family laundry in St. Louis. It could operate out of the second floor of the Halloran laundry building and share some of the overhead costs. With Halloran's advice and financial help Suits established his own company, the Hollis E. Suits Family Laundry.

In those days, before the home washer and dryer were almost universally installed in every middle class home and apartment building, a family laundry provided an essential service for the housewife. Especially for those who could not afford a laundress or lived in apartments and had no place to hang out the clothes to dry.

The decade of the 1920s was a time of national prosperity and the laundry benefited from that and from Suits' entrepreneurial skills. The Suits Laundry grew rapidly and became profitable in the decade. The company took pride in the high quality of its work and built up a large customer base throughout Greater St. Louis. It grew to eventually have about 90 employees. Its slogan was "Better Than a Good Laundress and Costs Less."

Suits was very innovative and enjoyed inventing new and more efficient ways to process laundry. One of his innovations was the printed form the people who checked in and counted the soiled laundry used. His version became widely adopted in the industry. Another innovation was pricing each item by the time it took to process it: This led to another company slogan, "Laundering Done by the Hour."

In a laundry the mangle is the large machine that irons the flatwear such as sheets, pillow slips and dish towels. Some times a piece would come through the mangle and not be ironed well. Suits invented what he called "The Go-back Cart." A poorly ironed piece could be placed on the Go-back Cart and propelled by an air pressure fixture back to the front end of the mangle, thus saving the time and effort to walk the piece back..

In 1923 the Suits family moved from an apartment in St. Louis to rent a house on W. Argonne Drive in the suburb of Kirkwood, MO. Suits' financial success made it possible in just a few years (by 1927) to purchase the large frame Victorian home on North Harrison in Kirkwood where the Suits family resided for the next 53 years.

In the decade of the 1930s the nation suffered a severe economic depression with unprecedented unemployment, which had a negative impact on all businesses. In addition it was a period of substantial labor unrest and disruption of business. The Suits Laundry was shut down for a time. Some St. Louis laundry owners were threatened with violence and the Suits home was under police protection for a short period. The thirties proved to be a challenge for the Suits Laundry and every business seeking to remain solvent.

However, the decade of the 1940s was a complete turnaround. It proved to be much better for the laundry. During the war years, a family laundry could get all the business it could possibly handle, although it had the problem of obtaining enough trained employees to operate, and was subject to price controls. Because of this Suits had to limit the number of new customers he served. He received many personal phone calls from people who were desperate to have there laundry done and begged to become customers.

It was during the war that Dorothy Suits joined the firm and became the bookkeeper for a number of years afterward. Actually all of the Suits boys worked in the laundry at one time or another, often in the summer. Dan recalls, "The first time was when I was five and Kingsley three. Dad had us at the plant - I suppose he was baby-sitting for the day - and put us to work picking the little clip-on tags off the six inch square markers that traveled through the wash with the individual bundles. I don't remember what we were paid, but on pay day, Dad presented each of us with pay envelopes.".

Gwynn remembers working in the summer as the "rough dry boy." He folded the towels and wash clothes as they came out of the dryers. He believes he was paid 12 1/2 cents an hour. Mac remembers wrapping shirt packages for residents of the St. Louis YMCA who were laundry customers. After the war Kingsley joined the firm as plant manager and became CEO when Hollis Suits' retired. Alan worked in the laundry from 1949 to 1956 as the office manager and route supervisor. In 1956 McCawley became the corporate Secretary- Treasurer.

In 1948 Thad became a laundry delivery man. He describes in detail his experience at the link below.