A Cleansing Influence

Dedicating a 20-story office building in downtown St. Paul last week, Industrialist Edward Bartley Osborn, 61, took time out to pacify the neighbors. "I apologize," he said in mock seriousness, "to you people who come to work in the morning and, when the sun is on the Osborn Building, have to wear dark glasses." The outside of the Osborn Building features fins of stainless steel that brilliantly reflect the morning sunlight--and help to make it what Osborn boasts is "the most cleanable building in the world."

Down With Human Effort. There are plenty of reasons for his boast. On the roof, there is a washing device that runs up and down the stainless-steel sides and cleans them automatically. Terrazzo walkways are purposely rough enough to knock the dirt from shoe bottoms; the dirt is picked up outside by vacuum sweepers. All air entering the building passes through electrostatic filters that remove dust particles; to make certain that dirty air does not sneak in through the entrance, the building has double doors equipped with an air-suction system. Air suction in office closets also removes loose dirt from clothes hung in them. Practically everything, from toilets to kitchen equipment in the lunchroom, has been wall-mounted to make floor cleaning easier. Windows stretch from ceiling to floor in order to eliminate dirt-catching horizontal ledges. Ninety-five percent of the cost of janitorial service is labor, says Osborn, and everything about the Osborn Building has been designed to cut down on the human effort in cleaning.

The clean-sweeper responsible for all this is Osborn, whose Economics Laboratory, Inc., occupies 75% of the building. This year the firm will do a $92 million business developing, manufacturing and selling products and processes to fight dirt. The company was organized in 1923 by Osborn's father, Merrit, who had developed a carpet-cleaning compound called Absorbit. Searching for a corporate name, Osborn called the firm Economics Laboratory to emphasize two points: it would be economical in costs to customers, and it would stress research to find other ways to keep things clean. As sales of Absorbit increased, the company added other cleaning products, including Soilax for walls, a dishwasher detergent called Electrasol, Jet-Dry rinser for dishes, and a cleanser christened Dip-it that takes the stains out of coffee makers and off plastic cups.

Bug-Free Beer. Succeeding his father as president in 1950, Osborn negotiated a series of mergers that led the company into other kinds of industrial cleaning. One of the more promising products is a detergent sanitizer with iodine as a base that kills bacteria in food products. Economics Laboratory got involved with it in connection with milk pasteurization, extended it to bakeries, for whom the company provides machinery and detergents that kill microbes and keep bread fresher longer. Using the lodophor process, breweries no longer needed to pasteurize beer, came up with the marketing concept of canned draught beer. So far, about 45 of 190 U.S. breweries sell such beers, and lately root-beer makers and butchers have begun to use it too.

Osborn, the moving spirit of the company, likes to say that he has no employees in Economics Laboratory but only associates. He is certain that he and his associates are headed for annual sales of $100 million next year and can expect continuous growth after that. One reason is that Economics Laboratory spends heavily on research and development to find new ways to fight dirt and germs. Another is that there is a whole world of dirt outside the U.S. waiting to be cleaned up. Economics Laboratory, through its international division, is now selling its specialties in 67 other grimy countries.

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