Dress is fast becoming a science. Particularly is this true of the dress
of women. The modern fashion magazine with its suggestions and plans,
shows how nearly dress is a formulated science. All this is right and
necessary. When used rightly there is no weapon in a woman’s hands
more powerful than effective dressing. It makes even a plain woman
attractive, and a fair one doubly so. It gives her a peculiar influence
which every earnest, true-hearted woman should seek rather than avoid.
To be effective, dress must be studied. But the thought which women
give to dress leads them often to give it undue importance, to make it
a paramount object rather than a means to influence. Most especially
is this true among a large class of self-supporting women and wives of
salaried men. The old charge of Polonius:
“Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy”
is often literally carried out by them, and in many cases this class
dresses in a more costly style and with more taste than any other in the
community. Nor is it mere outside show. They do not wear silk dresses and
coarse boots, nor velvet mantles and no gloves. Their wardrobe is almost
invariably complete and in taste. They are sensibly, neatly and richly
dressed women. They have studied and mastered the science of dressing
well. They live within their incomes, too; but in almost every case their
salaries give them nothing but food and raiment. At the end of a year,
beyond their wardrobes and the amount of rather questionable prestige
which their good clothes have given them in a certain circle—rarely a
circle which is superior to their own—they have nothing, and here lies
the wrong. No matter how small an income may be it ought to be so used
that it will do more. If for a year’s work we have simply the necessaries
of life, we have achieved small success. But few people put their money
where it yields substantial return; few devote a fair portion of their
earnings to increase the value of their work or to multiply implements of
work. We rarely find persons who devote a fair amount of their salaries
to charities, but we do often find salaries of from six hundred to one
thousand dollars yielding seal-skin sacks and velvet gowns. Are such
garments consistent with the steady course of self-culture which every
person should pursue, or with the tithe which every moralist, not to say
Christian, should devote to the world of woe about us? Common sense tells
us that we can not live like the wealthy unless we are wealthy.
It is among the salaried class particularly that this evil exists.
Perhaps the cause springs from the way in which they earn their
livelihood. Money comes to them regularly and surely; they see no reason
why it should cease, and so give less attention to strict economy than
the man whose success depends upon the care and thrift with which he
lives. Their future promotion depends upon their faithfulness, not upon
their economy, so that often a man of moderate salary keeps a more
expensive establishment than a man of moderate wealth. In the latter
case future business advancement depends upon the amount he can save to
invest, in the former simply upon his sticking to his work. Salaried
people too often live like school boys upon their annual allowance.
Whatever the cause, there is a large class of people among us much
inferior to what they might be, both in usefulness and ability, simply
from the wholly selfish expenditures of their incomes.