than
it has long been for a man."

This was the word heard at a woman's club not long ago, and reinforced
within the week by two well-known journals edited in the interests of
women at large. The editorial page of one held a fervid appeal for
greater simplicity of dress and living in general, followed by half a
column of entreaty to women to buy ready-made clothing, and thus save
time for higher pursuits and the attainment of broader views. With
feebler pipe, but in the same key, sounded the second advocate of
simplification, adding:--

"Never was there a time when women could dress with as much real
elegance on as small an expenditure of money. Bargains abound, and
there is small excuse for dowdiness. The American woman is fast
taking her place as the best-dressed woman in the civilized world."

Believing very ardently that the right of every woman born includes not
only "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but beauty also, it
being one chief end of woman to include in her own personality all
beauty attainable by reasonable means, I am in heartiest agreement with
one side of the views quoted. But in this quest we have undertaken, and
from which, once begun, there is no retreat, strange questions arise;
and in this new dawn of larger liberty and wider outlook is seen the
little cloud which, if no larger than a man's hand, holds the seed of as
wild a storm as has ever swept over humanity.

For emancipation on the one side has meant no corresponding emancipation
for the other; and as one woman selects, well pleased, garment after
garment, daintily tucked and trimmed and finished beyond any capacity of
ordinary home sewing, marvelling a little that a few dollars can give
such lavish return, there arises, from narrow attic and dark, foul
basement, and crowded factory, the cry of the women whose life-blood is
on these garments. Through burning, scorching days of summer; through
marrow-piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags, with white-faced
children at their knees, crying for more bread, or, silent from long
weakness, looking with blank eyes at the flying needle, these women toil
on, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours even, before the fixed task is done.
The slice of baker's bread and the bowl of rank black tea, boiled to
extract every possibility of strength, are taken, still at the machine.
It is easier to sit there than in rising and movement to find what
weariness is in every limb. Th