WOMEN AND DRESS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2737, 16 February 1910, Page 3

WOMEN AND DRESS.

“THE CANKER OF WOMANHOOD.’’

LADY NOVELIST’S PROTEST

“Pure luxury’’ is the way in which one-half of the women of the present day dress, in the opinion of Mrs. Annie Steel, the well-known novelist. In a letter published in “The Times” »u December 28, Airs. Steel said: — Sir, —The following quotation from a daily paper of yesterday is responsible lor this letter :

"As the important period of the general election is quickly approacuing our women, anxious to help and work for their friends, for their country, arc busy ordering costumes for the campaign. . . . Velvet is the prevailing note in. these charming creations, winch seem idea] gowns ror the occasion.”

Velvet! and we women ask for votes. Velvet! when for Liberal and Conservative alike the fate of Britain quivers in the balance.

U seems to me, sir, that it is time for men to put some check upon that canker of womanhood, the passion tor dress, which has already eaten out the hear’;- oi : our council school girls nnJ sai ned the sanity of our society women. Jf proof of tins were wanting, what more could we desire than the fact that ten years ago statistics showed that there were eleven times as many drapers’ shops in London, per mile of the population, as there were in the London of fifty years ago? And what have these ten years brought as increase?

Yes! It is time to make dress pay its toll. If not the vice, it is, at any rate, the luxury of the female community, as tobacco and alcohol are the vices or the luxuries of the male. It stands eye to eye with them; why should is go scot tree? Both Conservatives and liberals will need money, and it would be better, to license drapers’ shops and take toll of their earnings, as we have to take toll of the liquor shops, than to linger the capital of the nation or tax food. (tec-half of the dress of the present day, amongst the rich and poor a.ike, is pure luxury; neither imitation Valenciennes nor real Mechlin, cheap tinsel, nor gold embroidery are necessaries of life.

Abstract justice may hesitate before diteetly taxing those who arc counted amongst children and idiots; but I believe that every woman who ( as I do, wants *a vote would welcome an attack on what is, in truth, the greatest obstacle, to our obtaining it, sincewho. reading the quotation L have given, would say that those for whom it was written were fit for the franchise? They form, it is true, the status quo of womanhood, in which lies the- strength of the anti-suffragist; but no thoughtful man can surely desire to he helped by-—“velvet!" —Yours truly,—

FLORA ANNIE STEEL