ADVANCE OF THE YELLOW MAN

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3581, 22 July 1912, Page 2

ADVANCE OF THE YELLOW MAN

A NEW CLOTHING ERA FOR HIM

According to Mr Putnam Wealo, in the Daily Telegraph, the change in the dress of all the upper classes in China is bound to come. The change will affect, at a rough estimate, 20.000,000 or 30,000,000 people out of a nation of 400,000,000. The change will come slowly, but inexorably. It will then attack at first the points of least resistance—the head and the feet. It will then affect undergarments. It will lie shown at first in essentially utilitarian directions—such as stout overcoats for cold weather, and raincoats for Central and Southern China, which are swamped by summer rains.

By a change of dress, the Chinese see a road which they must traverse to regain the national self-respect which lias-been almost blotted out by a ec-ntury of disgrace in foreign intercourse. In the near future, among the n.d-f'v’' Chinese clothes will be reserved for the family circle. And here wo reach the- crux of the matter—the new point which wo must insist upon. Manufacturers in England have hitherto limited themselves in the main to turning out by the million yards every variety of cloth foi the Chinese markets. The sum total of this traffic to-day reaches a stupendous total in hundreds of millions of yards—nourishing a goodly part of Lancashire and a growing portion of- Yorkshire., and involving vast amounts of capital. The change which lias come means that British manufacturers must go a step farther must consider now. at once, the practicability of shipping ready made clothing of standard Chinese measurements on a wholesale basis.