As a work of art the large and handsome display of paper costumes has never been equaled.  No such display of costumes, representing lace, velvet, linen, silk, cloth, etc., all made in paper, has ever been seen anywhere in the world prior to this exhibit; and this work of art was the handicraft of women.

In the Homer Young Company’s sewing machine the demand and supply for women’s comfort was again called out in the combined dressing table and sewing machine, a good invention for flats, the fad of the day, that was designed for convenience.

    The electric flatirons were certainly an advance in the right
    direction.

    A great time saver was the “Universal button fastener,”
    “guaranteed not to come off.”

In some departments of manufacture exhibits the percentage of woman’s labor was said to be 10 per cent; the wax-figure department, 75 per cent; in operating sewing machines for the manufacture of wearing apparel, etc., the percentage is about 90.  Operation of sewing machines and kindred industries have reached about as high a state of perfection as possible.  The same holds good in regard to the Singer sewing machines of Great Britain.  Their output is larger for machines for the manufacture of embroideries, lace, saddlery, leather, top-boots, sewings, and upholstery.  A specialty of machine work was their fine hemstitching.  Perhaps the attractiveness of the Singer sewing machine exhibits was owing largely to the fact that they were shown in motion.

Germany’s sewing-machine product showed great skill in workmanship.  Lintz & Eckardt, Berlin, displayed the output of eight styles of embroidery machines, ribbon plaiting, and a three-needle machine with band apparatus, which turned out wonderful work of bead and silk embroideries on silk and other fabrics.

The many dress cutting and ladies’ tailoring systems, again the inventions of man, are perhaps among the most useful in women’s work to-day in teaching dress cutting from a perfect system, and greatly assisting in the work of drafting garments from actual measurements.  They are time savers, and are so constructed as to follow the changes in fashion, and women can, by their use, become expert workmen and display artistic skill.  A great advancement has been made along this line of work during the past ten years, or since the last exposition; not only from a practical standpoint, but as an educational feature, especially in rural districts, for through their schools, conducted through correspondence, they have enabled women throughout the country to learn dressmaking and to keep in close touch with the styles of the world.  The McDowell system, for manufacturing purposes, is superior, and under a skilled workman is most correct.  The Edward Curran drafting machines are useful for the novice—­good on account of their simplicity, being more portable on account of folding into a small compass.  The same can be said of the Valentine system.

    In this group there was no installation by foreign women.