Under the old regime costumes had been worked out for the various classes.  They were adapted both to the purse and to the pursuit.  They were fitting—­that is, silk was not worn in huts or homespun in palaces; slippers were for carriages and sabots for streets.  The garments of a class were founded on good sound principles on the whole—­but they marked the class.  Democracy sought to destroy outward distinctions.  The proscribed costumes went into the pot with proscribed positions.  Under democracy we can cook in silk petticoats and go to the White House in a cap and apron, if we will.  And we often will, that being a way to advertise our equality!

Class costumes destroyed, the principles back of them, that is, fitness, quality, responsibility, were forgotten.  The old instinct for ornament broke loose.  Its tyranny was strengthened by the eternal desire of the individual to prove himself superior to his fellows.  Wealth is the generally accepted standard of measurement of value in this country to-day, and there is no way in which the average man can show wealth so clearly as in encouraging his women folk to array themselves.  Thus we have the anomaly in a democracy of a primitive instinct let loose, and the adoption of discarded aristocratic devices for proving you are better than your neighbor, at least in the one revered particular of having more money to spend!

The complication of the woman’s life by this domination of clothes is extremely serious.  In many cases it becomes not one of the sides of her business, but the business of her life.  Such undue proportion has the matter taken in the American Woman’s life under democracy that one is sometimes inclined to wonder if it is not the real “woman question.”  Certainly in numbers of cases it is the rock upon which a family’s happiness splits.  The point is not at all that women should not occupy themselves seriously with dress, that they should not look on it as an art, as legitimate as any other.  The difficulty comes in not mastering the art, in the entirely disproportionate amount of attention which is given to the subject, in the disregard of sound principles.

The economic side of the matter presses hard on the whole country.  It is not too much to say that the chief economic concern of a great body of women is how to get money to dress, not as they should, but as they want to.  It is to get money for clothes that drives many, though of course not the majority, of girls, into shops, factories, and offices.  It is because they are using all they earn on themselves that they are able to make the brave showing that they do.  Many a girl is misjudged by the well-meaning observer or investigator because of this fact—­“She could never dress like that on $6, $8, or $15 a week and support herself,” they tell you.  She does not support herself.  She works for clothes, and clothes alone.  Moreover, the girl who has the pluck to do hard regular work that she may dress better has interest enough to work at night to make her earnings go farther.  No one who has been thrown much with office girls but knows case after case of girls who with the aid of some older member of the family cut and make their gowns, plan and trim their hats.  Moreover, this relieving the family budget of dressing the girl is a boon to fathers and mothers.