Has all this no relation to national prosperity—­to the cost of living?  The effect on the victim’s personal budget is clear—­the effect it has on the family budget, which it dominates, is clear.  In both cases nothing of permanent value is acquired.  The good linen undergarments, the “all wool” gown, the broadcloth cape or coat, those standard garments which the thrifty once acquired and cherished, only awaken the mirth of the pretty little spendthrift on $8 a week.  Solid pieces of furniture such as often dignify even the huts of European peasants and are passed down from mother to daughter for generations—­are objects of contempt by the younger generation here.  Even the daughters of good old New England farmers are found to-day glad to exchange mahogany for quartered oak and English pewter for pressed glass and stamped crockery.  True, another generation may come in and buy it all back at fabulous prices, but the waste of it!

This production of shoddy cloth, cotton laces, cheap furniture, what is it but waste!  Waste of labor and material!  Time and money and strength which might have been turned to producing things of permanent values, have been spent in things which have no goodness in them, things which because of their lack of integrity and soundness must be forever duplicated, instead of freeing industry to go ahead, producing other good and permanent things.

What it all amounts to is that the instinct for ornament has gotten the upper hand of a great body of American women.  We have failed so far to develop standards of taste, fitness, and quality, strong, sure, and good enough effectually to impose themselves.  There is no national taste in dress; there is only admirable skill in adapting fashions made in other countries.  There is no national sense of restraint and proportion.  It is pretty generally agreed that getting all you can is entirely justifiable.  There is no national sense of quality; even the rich to-day in this country wear imitation laces.  The effect of all this is a bewildering restlessness in costume—­a sheeplike willingness to follow to the extreme the grotesque and the fantastic.  The very general adoption of the ugly and meaningless fashions of the last few years—­peach-basket hats, hobble skirts, slippers for the street—­is a case in point.  From every side this is bad—­defeating its own purpose—­corrupting national taste and wasting national substance.

Moreover, the false standard it sets up socially is intolerable.  It sounds fantastic to say that whole bodies of women place their chief reliance for social advancement on dress, but it is true.  They are, or are not, as they are gowned!  The worst of this fantasy is not only that it forces too much attention from useful women, but that it gives such poise and assurance to the ignorant and useless!  If you look like the women of a set, you are as “good” as they, is the democratic standard of many a young woman.  If for any reason she is not able to produce