Chapter IX

Larger Economic Considerations

IT IS possible for a man to spend a good deal of money on his clothes. Some men do. Socks and underwear may be of silk; shoes made to measure; the most expensive tailors patronized; and all purchased in profusion and with continual variety. But item for item and change for change, the woman can out spend him, and add an endless list of articles he cannot parallel.

While it is still possible, with intelligent care, for a woman to dress on three to five hundred dollars a year, to say nothing of the millions who do it on fifty or less; the woman who is “in society" finds three to five thousand a moderate allowance, and many spend more. The influence of this down-reaching example spreads far and wide, to all classes of society; an insidious pressure upon all to spend and still to spend, on clothes.

Here we come nearer to that governing force called Fashion; but, postponing as long as possible; supposing, for the moment, that our costumes remained the same in style; we will consider merely their profusion and elaboration, as instances of economic waste.

If we had one unvarying kind of dress, as with the Chinese, it would be easily possible to have the necessary minimum, and then to allow a generous margin for personal variation in taste. The minimum in clothing rests on those basic principles mentioned in previous chapters; we must be covered, we must be kept warm, we must be adorned, we must be properly expressed—in legitimate symbolism. This calls for garments of such and such size, color, shape, durability, and decoration.

The “irreducible minimum” would be like the classic instance of Mr. Fox, the father of The Society of Friends, who, wishing to remove the subject of dress entirely from his mind, had a suit of leather made for him, put it on, and retired to the woods to meditate undisturbed.

Without trying to indicate any one permanent garment such as this, it remains perfectly possible for man or woman to settle on some kind of costume as necessary and fitting; to allow what is necessary to provide it; and to limit their expense for dress to that amount.

Throughout the country there are women in plenty, who from economic necessity, do precisely this as far as the amount goes; but are not thereby freed from anxiety and discontent. Because of the continuous extravagance and display of those whose main business in life is to wear clothes; because of the catering of all the shops to this level of extravagance; because of the deeply rooted sentiment among men as well as women in regard to what is admirable in feminine attire; the steady influence upon all women is to spend more than is necessary, or to wish to even if they cannot.

The general result, as here suggested, is that more people work in textile manufacture than are necessary; that more people work in the construction and decoration of garments than are necessary; that more people work in the distributing and selling of garments than are necessary; and that the purchaser spends not only more money, but more time, thought, and emotion than is necessary.

The evolving of these super-physical tissues is a social process, and should be as normal, as pleasant, as other legitimate social processes. The arts and crafts involved are interesting and not injurious if properly organized. To shear the sheep, to wash and card and dye the wool, to spin and weave, to cut and sew—these are not“dangerous trades," or need not be. And if all this was rightly done, we should have a certain regular number of workers in these trades, all carefully educated to know the use and value of the work, the whole history of each craft and its relation to the others.

In proportion to the population, with full allowance for a margin of fluctuating taste and demand, we ought long since to have determined what proportion of human labor is necessary to clothe humanity. There is a norm for all proportionate social functions; and there is the same liability to the abnormal, to morbid monstrous growth and to disease, that is found in physical functions. The physical body spends a certain amount of its energy in producing hair. If too much goes to hair there is less for other use. A woman with five yards of heavy hair would be a freak, not a beauty. A man with whiskers he could step on would not find them an advantage or an ornament.

There is a legitimate limit to society's output of clothing

Reduced to the work of one person, alone and. wholly selfdependent, the more time spent on making garments, the less for securing food, shelter, or any other advantage. In a small group, say of twenty, similarly restricted, two might produce and one prepare and serve the food; four more do laundry work and all cleaning; four build the shelter and the furniture; other four make all dishes, utensils, tools and the like; and there would remain four for clothing and every other kind of work. All these should enjoy short hours and hold equal value and honor in the community.

With our present organization of mills and of labor the year's work of one man would clothe thousands. Our vast improvement in machinery and applied force has reduced, or should have reduced, the number of workers and the hours of labor. That it has not is due to more than one economic error, but among them there is no escaping this simple fact: if we wear twice as much clothing as we need the people who make it have to work twice as long. Waste is waste, whether it applies to the labor of one person or of a million. Waste is waste whether it is paid for or not; that is the point we have to understand.

Think again of the simple facts in an individual case of selfsupplving labor; following nature's guide—the line of least resistance. It is good for the individual to work, i.e., to expend energy, to an amount sufficient to use and develop his powers; not to over-use and exhaust therm. It is good for the individual to supply his more primitive needs easily and quickly in order that he may apply his energy along lines of higher development.

If, as in savagery, the whole time and energy of the race is spent in the effort to obtain food and shelter, no further progress can be made. The reason that keeping cattle is a social advantage over hunting is that it provided more food with less exertion—man had time to think. The reason that agriculture is a still greater advantage, the base of all our higher growth, is that through its generous supply the labor of a few people could feed many—and then the others were free to do other things. Thus alone have we have been enabled to develop our wide variety of arts, crafts, trades and professions.

In order to develop the highest social traits we must have a degree of leisure. So far we have made our halting and uncertain progress by striving for these social benefits separately as individuals, or establishing them within limits, as classes. But the irresistible progress of democracy makes it continually clearer that among “fellow citizens” where “the majority rules," it is necessary to raise the standard of that majority.

A despotism, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, an hierarchy, may subsist on a sub-stratum of overworked, underpaid, ignorant “subjects." But democracy, which in its largest sense means the full awakening and inter-relating of all the people, the awakening of society to conscious life—this calls for intelligence, for education, for good manners and morals in everybody—no less.

We in America, vaguely recognizing this, have striven to offer free schooling to all, and to provide free libraries, museums, and other sources of education. But we have not yet seen that a population working ten or twelve hours a day at uncongenial toil; mechanical, over-specialized, unrelated, in which the worker takes no interest, cannot be intelligent, educated, or well-bred. Until each citizen has the opportunity for the fullest personal development, our democracy is and must be inferior.

Can we not see at once that if all our people were of the lowest grade we now endure we should have no standing as a nation? Can we not see farther that the greater the proportion of wise, welldeveloped, well-educated, healthy and happy people, the higher stands our country among the nations? Can we not think far enough to see that by every one of the work-dulled, work-wearied, workembittered population, we and Our Country are lowered, weakened, checked?

Whether we see it or not, it is so; and in relation to the subject of this book, we should recognize also that the clothing industries constitute too large a share in the overwork of the population.

There is the initial expense for cotton, wool, flax, silk; the necessary amount of labor to raise as much as we need; and the unnecessary amount, the waste of time, of strength, of skill, of land also, used to supply the materials we do not need. Then all the mils and shops and workrooms where the successive processes go on to fit the materials for our use—or our waste; all the machinery of transportation with its fuel; all the warehouses, stores and shops, and their thousands upon thousands of foot-sore employees.

If the women of today use up twice as much dress goods as they need, then they are responsible for wasting half the Iabor of all those toiling millions.

Even if we paid as much money as we do now for our clothing, and used but half as much, the saving in time alone would lift the standard of living for all those who work to furnish us with garments.

As a minor part of this view some consideration should be paid to the time spent by the consumer. Freely admitting that there are women so besotted with personal decoration and its complex materials that they actually enjoy spending hours, days, weeks, months, discussing, studying, examining, purchasing, and in all the timedevouring struggles with the dressmaker, it remains true that there are other women who do not enjoy it. Even if we were all exquisitely trained in the understanding and appreciation of textile art, and of design and execution in costume, but a few would care to devote so much time to it. As it is, while undeniably it gives pleasure to some, it is a weariness, a bore, a real burden, to others.

Our standards of femininity are such that we condone, even admire, in a woman, this incessant concern about the details of costume, where we despise and condemn it in a man. To see a group of men immersed in a discussion of “trouserings" and the like, we find pitiable: some day we shall learn that it is not only as much, but more pitiable, in women. Remember always that the instinct of sexdecoration is primarily male, and all the intense prepossession shown in it by women is a proof of their abnormal position. In a wellordered civilization the women would long since have evolved a suitable costume; useful, beautiful, economical, allowing for full personal expression; and if there was any difference in the interest shown by the two sexes in their personal appearance the excess would be on the part of men, not women.

In our present condition we find each woman carrying among her other handicaps this: that she must spend more on dress than a man; more in time, thought, labor, or money—sometimes in all. She is required to dress in a certain manner on pain of more kinds of loss than threaten him. Even in the lowest grades of hard work, of dirty work, she is expected to be “neat" in her appearance where he is not; she must add to her other labors the extra toil of keeping her clothes clean—and his as well.

Let us now see the effect on men of this general waste in dress.

The boy, first impressed by the difference in clothes between his sister and himself—that totally unnecessary and most injurious distinction—early learns to despise “girl's clothes." But because they are "girl's clothes," used as a sex-distinction and a sex attraction from the first, as for instance in the broad flaunting ribbon fastened to the hair of the little girl, to cry aloud as far as it can be seen: “Girl! Pretty!"; as soon as the boy reaches “the impressionable age" he begins to be attracted by, instead of despising, girl's clothes.

An illustration in a current magazine presents, all by itself, as if seen in a window exhibit, what is described as “a meltingly feminine slipper." The meltingly masculine heart seems always particularly susceptible to slippers—see Cinderella. But whatever the foolishness is, the “frou-frou," the “tap of little heels," the glint of jewels or bright silk, the man is attracted by the clothes.

He does not object. He does not criticize. He expects her to dress to attract him, and ignores her if she does not; even sharply condemns her if she seems indifferent to his opinion and wears what he considers “queer." When he loves her he faces, even with ardor, the privilege of providing her with those “feminine attributes," as was ingenuously shown by The Little Minister. In the matter of gifts, beyond the flowers and sweetmeats which have become a convention, he bestows bonnets, furs, and, always, jewels. Think for a moment of how different the relation of the sexes would be, even in this one particular, if women were independent. Suppose they wore neat, comfortable, beautiful and becoming clothes; restrained and simple; human rather than feminine, and provided them for themselves. Suppose it was no more allowable for a man to propitiate a woman by spending money for some article of clothing, than for her to reverse the process, and try to propitiate him by buying him a new hat, or a fur overcoat. It is a stretch, of the imagination, I admit—but try it. Try to imagine women as frankly offended if anyone tried to buy their favor—to bribe them.

Then what would a man do who wanted to please a woman? He would have to please her by his actions—not his gifts. He would have to be what she liked, instead of giving her what she liked, which is easier far. In their purchaseability women surrender that deep-rooted power of race improvement which is theirs by nature.

If women were true to their real place and duty they would steadily lift the world by demanding a higher standard of character and conduct in men; whereas, as it is, they steadily hold back the world by demanding a higher standard of expense.

The man must "support" the woman; and this not only in the early sense of providing a shelter, food, and warmth; but in an everincreasing limitless sense of providing for her unmeasured wants in clothing. He must provide for his wife and his children not only necessaries, comforts, and, if he can, luxuries, but he must add to that a load of expense for things neither necessary, comfortable, nor luxurious—merely demanded by girls and women as parts of their costume, or accessories thereto.

This anticipated burden is a considerable factor in postponing marriage. This is what the father has in mind when he looks from his highly decorated, excessively attractive daughter to the young man who wants to marry her, and says: “Can you support her, my boy?"

The man who has to support the over-dressed wife, and later, the over-dressed daughters, must needs acquire more money than would otherwise be necessary. It does not enable him to earn more. His own market value is not increased by the demands made upon him; often it is decreased, from mere anxiety. But get the money he must; and in many cases he does.

The tremendous tension of our economic life is by no means all due to any one cause, but among many this is no inconsiderable one. It works in the proverbial “vicious circle." The woman, placed in her unnatural position of dependence upon the man, is forthwith obliged to develop new powers of attraction in order to catch and hold him. Where in the natural relation he had to manifest all the splendor possible in order to please her, she now reverses the natural process and caters to him.

Since his taste is simple and narrow, asking always for one thing, sex-attraction, she develops sex-attraction to a fine art. Since there are limits to personal beauty and drawing power, but practically none to the extra-personal additions of clothing and ornament, she launches out on a boundless, soundless sea of extraneous adornment, of a superficial, extensible femininity. And since man's taste is nothing if not variable; while the inexorable laws of social advantage have given us a permanent monogamy, the play of other laws have added to “the one woman"—liable to become monotonous—the infinite variety of a thousand costumes.

With this foundation lying broad and deep beneath, the superstructure rises accordingly.’ To please the man the woman must “dress."

Out of long habit and associative advantage she develops an “instinct" for such decoration. To please the woman the man caters to this instinct developed to please him, and buys for the woman the ornaments wherewith she maintains her hold upon him.

A whole literature has grown up around this inverted custom. The poets have aided it. The artists have aided it; seldom the sculptors. That grave and noble art must bear in mind the beauty of form alone, and of all costumes shown in sculpture that is the most beautiful of which there is least, or which least conceals the Real Beauty—that of the body itself. The painter may delight in shadowy velvet, or the curving sheen of satin, and in every joy of harmony or contrast in color. The sculptor loves the rounded lines and interplay of bone and muscle, the grace and proportion of the whole body.

But sculpture has practically no influence upon the dress of women. We decorate our parlors with casts of great statues, and sit unabashed before them, dressed like dolls and dummies.

Think for a moment of any other animal, preserving statues of its normal shape—and living on amid such statues in distorted, crippled travesty of its own true form!

But the condition is here. Man's admiration for woman is so completely clothed and ornamented that there have even arisen those weird forms of unnatural gratification in which the garments arouse sensations not kindled by the body itself.

So the vicious circle goes on.

Men are taxed heavily to provide the decorations of women. Women, to please men, must have those decorations. Other men, to obtain the money to decorate their women, turn all their energies to catering to the ever-growing taste for these attractions.

When we criticize, as well we may, the gross appeal only too evident in many of our women's garments, let us not forget while we blame the women who wear them, that the articles were designed by men. They knew what taste to please.

Can we, by another stretch of the imagination, conceive of disinterested artists designing simple, noble, lovely garments; and with one more effort, of women wise enough to choose those beautiful things? Even then, the women so attired would be at a disadvantage compared with those whose unerring sense of sexuo-economic gain led them to put on things not indeed beautiful, but efficaciously “attractive."

It is cost added to cost, always more ingenuity, more daring and flagrant attempts, more expense; and the women, some knowingly, but more unknowingly, lending themselves to this evil process of social debasement.

The economic loss is widespread; it is both open and insidious. It appears in the enormous figures of direct expense among the wealthy, and the even worse extravagance of the merely vicious. It weighs on the worthy man who is legally supporting “good" women, and also on the unworthy man who is illegally supporting “bad" ones.

But it goes farther than that. It reaches down the whole line of workers; all who manufacture, handle, sell these things. It changes the habits of a whole people; weakens the power of self-denial; develops over-indulgence on other lines—on all lines.

Just as a disease in one part of the body must needs involve other parts, so any social malformation or excess affects the body politic throughout.

Our moralists and economists of past times have not been slow to blame what they were content to call “feminine vanity" and “the extravagance of women" as if that was the whole story. But neither men nor women have realized the misplacement which is the cause of all this evil; that morbid relation between man and woman which by making him her food supply has made general discord of what should be general harmony.

It is not a permanent condition. It is not a natural condition. It may been seen changing under our eyes today, in proportion as women become economically independent. A girl, easily able to supply her own needs, is not so dependent on presents. A woman who still pavs her own bills, though married, can love her husband disinterestedly—for his character and achievement, regardless of his purchasing power. A mother, still paying her own bills and wishing to help provide for her children, is not likely to spend more on clothing than is necessary. And at any age, if she is taught from infancy to recognize, to love and honor, real human beauty, she will have too much respect for that highest form of life to dress it like a monkey or a paper doll.

Such a change in woman would work an equal change in man. Brought up in affectionate equality, little girls and boys dressing and playing similarly, he would not learn that precocious contempt for one who is “only a girl." If she were agile, muscular, free-limbed, well-trained and vigorous; if her clothes were those proper to agile youth, beautiful in line and color, in texture and make, but not supersexual in any way; then the attraction between young men and women would be natural and not fostered artificially.

In Consuelo, when the heroine, fleeing through the mountains with a young shepherd, puts on a shepherd's costume for safety and convenience, the youth naively admits that his feelings toward her instantly changed—that he found it easy to be her friend and comrade merely, where before he had been passionately attracted.

It is not necessary that the dress of men and women be identical. It is not by any means necessary for us to give up variety and beauty, delicacy and ornament. But the beauty and delicacy, the decoration and variety, should be along lines of real textile construction and personal feeling—not along these obvious lines of sex-attraction.

In direct influence on our economic conditions this would tend to greatly simplify life and reduce expenses; to shorten hours of labor; to lessen the strain and pressure on hard-worked men of all classes, and to greatly elevate what we may call the economic morals of women.

There would appear a new standard of taste. Of two garments, equally good, we should learn to be proudest of the one costing the least labor in manufacture, and also the least labor to keep clean. Instead of the frivolous variable taste, never clear as to what it wants, buying continuously and without satisfaction, we should develop a pleasant certainty as to what we wanted; select with definite judgment, and enjoy for years thereafter.

The reactive results on the whole economic field would reach far wider than can be indicated here. Women are half the world and of the strongest formative influence on the other half. If women reached a sound economic basis of thought on this one subject it could not fail to affect the judgment of the whole world.

And from the lives of all women who work, who think, who already long for beauty and comfort and peace of mind in clothing, there would be lifted an enormous burden. Also from the lives of many million men.

(To be continued)