riches has become a
contagion which will react upon her. The development of China is normal,
that of America hysterical. Our growth has been along the line of peace;
that of other nations has been entirely opposed to their own religious
teaching, showing it to be farcical and pure sophistry.

If I should tell you how many American women asked me why Chinese women
bandage their feet you would be amazed; yet every one of these submitted
to and practised a deformity that has seriously affected the growth and
development of the race. I am no iconoclast, but listen to the story of
the American woman who, with one hand, deforms her waist in the most
barbarous fashion, while waving the other in horror at her Chinese
sister with the bound feet. American women change their fashions twice a
year or more. Fashions are in the hands of the middle classes, and the
highest lady in the land is completely at their mercy; to disobey the
mandates of fashion is to become ridiculous. The fashion is set in Paris
and various cities by men and women who have skilled artists to draw
patterns and paint pictures showing the new mode. These are published in
certain papers and issued by millions, republished in America, and no
woman here would have the temerity to ignore them. The laws of the Medes
and Persians are not more inexorable.

It is not a suggestion but an order, a fiat, a command, so we see this
free nation really truckling to or dominated by a class of tradesmen.
The object of the change of style is to create a sale for new goods,
give work for laborers, and enable the producer to reach the pocketbook
of the rich man; but the "fashions" have become so fixed, so thoroughly
a national feature, that they affect rich and poor, and we have the
spectacle of every woman studying these guides and conforming to them
with a servility beyond belief. I once said to a lady, "The Chinese lady
dresses richer than the American, but her styles have been very much the
same for thousands of years," but I believe she doubted it. It would be
futile, indeed impossible, for me to explain the extravagances of
American fashion. Their own press and stage use it as a standard butt.
At the present time tablets or plates of fashion insist upon an outline
which shows the form completely, the antipodes of a Chinese woman; and
this is intensified by some of the women who, when in the street, grasp
the skirt and in an ingenious way wrap it about so that the outline of