at
the wearer is not engaged in any kind of productive labor. In the
evolutionary process by which our system of dress has been elaborated
into its present admirably perfect adaptation to its purpose, this
subsidiary line of evidence has received due attention. A detailed
examination of what passes in popular apprehension for elegant apparel
will show that it is contrived at every point to convey the impression
that the wearer does not habitually put forth any useful effort. It
goes without saying that no apparel can be considered elegant, or
even decent, if it shows the effect of manual labor on the part of the
wearer, in the way of soil or wear. The pleasing effect of neat and
spotless garments is chiefly, if not altogether, due to their carrying
the suggestion of leisure-exemption from personal contact with
industrial processes of any kind. Much of the charm that invests the
patent-leather shoe, the stainless linen, the lustrous cylindrical hat,
and the walking-stick, which so greatly enhance the native dignity of
a gentleman, comes of their pointedly suggesting that the wearer cannot
when so attired bear a hand in any employment that is directly and
immediately of any human use. Elegant dress serves its purpose of
elegance not only in that it is expensive, but also because it is
the insignia of leisure. It not only shows that the wearer is able to
consume a relatively large value, but it argues at the same time that he
consumes without producing.

The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way of
demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive employment. It
needs no argument to enforce the generalization that the more elegant
styles of feminine bonnets go even farther towards making work
impossible than does the man's high hat. The woman's shoe adds the
so-called French heel to the evidence of enforced leisure afforded
by its polish; because this high heel obviously makes any, even the
simplest and most necessary manual work extremely difficult. The like
is true even in a higher degree of the skirt and the rest of the drapery
which characterizes woman's dress. The substantial reason for our
tenacious attachment to the skirt is just this; it is expensive and it
hampers the wearer at every turn and incapacitates her for all useful
exertion. The like is true of the feminine custom of wearing the hair
excessively long.

But the woman's apparel not only goes beyond that of the modern man
in th