shion is an evil gigantic in its proportions and
far-reaching in its results.

We have no right to interfere with the woman's instinct to make
herself beautiful. Rather we should encourage it, and should carefully
instruct her in her impressionable years as to what real beauty is. It
is almost safe to say that at present the principle by which the
modern woman is guided in deciding the great questions of feminine
attire is imitation. Incidentally, we may remark that nobody profits
by such a mistaken foundation except the manufacturer, who moves the
women of the world about like pawns on a chessboard merely to benefit
his business. The society woman brings the latest thing "from Paris."
The large New York establishments sell to their patrons copies of
"Paris models." The middle-class shops and the middle-class women copy
the copies. The cheap shops and the poor women copy the copy of the
copy. Every copy is made of less worthy material than its model, of
gaudier colors, with cheaper trimmings, until we have the pitiful
spectacle of girls who earn barely enough to keep body and soul
together spending their money for garments neither suitable nor
durable--sleazy, shabby after a single wearing, short-lived--yet for a
few ephemeral minutes "up to date."

How far this heartbreaking habit of imitation extends in the poor
girl's life we can hardly say. She marries, and buys furniture,
crockery, and lace curtains cheap and unsuitable, like her clothes,
always imitations and soon gone, to be superseded by more of the same
sort. What thoughtful woman desires to feel herself part of an
influence which leads to so much that is insincere, uneconomical,
wasteful both of raw material and of the infinitely more important
material which makes women's souls? What teacher of young girls has a
right to hold back from setting her hand against the formation of
habits so undesirable?

And what of the vast output of the factories which turn out cheap
cloth, cheaper trimmings, imitations of silk, imitations of velvet,
ribbons which will scarcely survive one tying, shoes with pasteboard
soles, and all the other intrinsically worthless products which now
find ready sale? When women have been educated to a standard of taste,
of suitability, of quality, which will forbid the use of cheap
imitations of elegant and costly articles, will not the world gain in
bringing such factories to the making of products of real worth
instead of their present o