THE GREATEST WONDER YET--FASHION DETHRONED.
"You surely can not form the slightest idea of the bodily ecstasy it
gives me to have done with that horrible masquerade in mummy clothes,"
exclaimed my companion as we left the house. "To think this is the first
time we have actually been walking together!"
"Surely you forget," I replied; "we have been out together several
times."
"Out together, yes, but not walking," she answered; "at least I was not
walking. I don't know what would be the proper zoological term to
describe the way I got over the ground inside of those bags, but it
certainly was not walking. The women of your day, you see, were trained
from childhood in that mode of progression, and no doubt acquired some
skill in it; but I never had skirts on in my life except once, in some
theatricals. It was the hardest thing I ever tried, and I doubt if I ever
again give you so strong a proof of my regard. I am astonished that you
did not seem to notice what a distressful time I was having."
But if, being accustomed, as I had been, to the gait of women hampered by
draperies, I had not observed anything unusual in Edith's walk when we
had been out on previous occasions, the buoyant grace of her carriage and
the elastic vigor of her step as she strode now by my side was a
revelation of the possibilities of an athletic companionship which was
not a little intoxicating.
To describe in detail what I saw in my tour that day through
the paper-process factories would be to tell an old story to
twentieth-century readers; but what far more impressed me than all the
ingenuity and variety of mechanical adaptations was the workers
themselves and the conditions of their labor. I need not tell my readers
what the great mills are in these days--lofty, airy halls, walled with
beautiful designs in tiles and metal, furnished like palaces, with every
convenience, the machinery running almost noiselessly, and every incident
of the work that might be offensive to any sense reduced by ingenious
devices to the minimum. Neither need I describe to you the princely
workers in these palaces of industry, the strong and splendid men and
women, with their refined and cultured faces, prosecuting with the
enthusiasm of artists their self-chosen tasks of combining use and
beauty. You all know what your factories are to-day; no doubt you find
them none too pleasant or convenient, having been used to such things all
your lives. No doubt you even criticise them in various ways as falling
short of what they might be, for such is human nature; but if you would
understand how they seem to me, shut your eyes a moment and try to
conceive in fancy what our cotton and woolen and paper mills were like a
hundred years ago.
Picture low rooms roofed with rough and grimy timbers and walled with
bare or whitewashed brick. Imagine the floor so crammed with machinery
for economy of space as to allow bare room for the workers to writhe
about among the flying arms and jaws of steel, a false motion meaning
death or mutilation. Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air,
with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, and
foul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang and clash of machinery like the
screech of a tornado.
But these were only the material conditions of the scene. Shut your eyes
once more, that you may see what I would fain forget I had ever seen--the
interminable rows of women, pallid, hollow-cheeked, with faces vacant and
stolid but for the accent of misery, their clothing tattered, faded, and
foul; and not women only, but multitudes of little children, weazen-faced
and ragged--children whose mother's milk was barely out of their blood,
their bones yet in the gristle.
* * * * *
Edith introduced me to the superintendent of one of the factories, a
handsome woman of perhaps forty years. She very kindly showed us about
and explained matters to me, and was much interested in turn to know what
I thought of the modern factories and their points of contrast with those
of former days. Naturally, I told her that I had been impressed, far more
than by anything in the new mechanical appliances, with the
transformation in the condition of the workers themselves.
"Ah, yes," she said, "of course you would say so; that must indeed be the
great contrast, though the present ways seem so entirely a matter of
course to us that we forget it was not always so. When the workers settle
how the work shall be done, it is not wonderful that the conditions
should be the pleasantest possible. On the other hand, when, as in your
day, a class like your private capitalists, who did not share the work,
nevertheless settled how it should be done it is not surprising that the
conditions of industry should have been as barbarous as they were,
especially when the operation of the competitive system compelled the
capitalists to get the most work possible out of the workers on the
cheapest terms."
"Do I understand." I asked, "that the workers in each trade regulate for
themselves the conditions of their particular occupation?"
"By no means. The unitary character of our industrial administration is
the vital idea of it, without which it would instantly become
impracticable. If the members of each trade controlled its conditions,
they would presently be tempted to conduct it selfishly and adversely to
the general interest of the community, seeking, as your private
capitalists did, to get as much and give as little as possible. And not
only would every distinctive class of workers be tempted to act in this
manner, but every subdivision of workers in the same trade would
presently be pursuing the same policy, until the whole industrial system
would become disintegrated, and we should have to call the capitalists
from their graves to save us. When I said that the workers regulated the
conditions of work, I meant the workers as a whole--that is, the people
at large, all of whom are nowadays workers, you know. The regulation and
mutual adjustment of the conditions of the several branches of the
industrial system are wholly done by the General Government. At the same
time, however, the regulation of the conditions of work in any occupation
is effectively, though indirectly, controlled by the workers in it
through the right we all have to choose and change our occupations.
Nobody would choose an occupation the conditions of which were not
satisfactory, so they have to be made and kept satisfactory."
* * * * *
While we were at the factory the noon hour came, and I asked the
superintendent and Edith to go out to lunch with me. In fact, I wanted to
ascertain whether my newly acquired credit card was really good for
anything or not.
"There is one point about your modern costumes," I said, as we sat at our
table in the dining hall, "about which I am rather curious. Will you tell
me who or what sets the fashions?"
"The Creator sets the only fashion which is now generally followed,"
Edith answered.
"And what is that?"
"The fashion of our bodies," she answered.
"Ah, yes, very good," I replied, "and very true, too, of your costumes,
as it certainly was not of ours; but my question still remains. Allowing
that you have a general theory of dress, there are a thousand differences
in details, with possible variations of style, shape, color, material,
and what not. Now, the making of garments is carried on, I suppose, like
all your other industries, as public business, under collective
management, is it not?"
"Certainly. People, of course, can make their own clothes if they wish
to, just as they can make anything else, but it would be a great waste of
time and energy."
"Very well. The garments turned out by the factories have to be made up
on some particular design or designs. In my day the question of designs
of garments was settled by society leaders, fashion journals, edicts from
Paris, or the Lord knows how; but at any rate the question was settled
for us, and we had nothing to do but to obey. I don't say it was a good
way; on the contrary, it was detestable; but what I want to know is, What
system have you instead, for I suppose you have now no society leaders,
fashion journals, or Paris edicts? Who settles the question what you
shall wear?"
"We do," replied the superintendent.
"You mean, I suppose, that you determine it collectively by democratic
methods. Now, when I look around me in this dining hall and see the
variety and beauty of the costumes, I am bound to say that the result of
your system seems satisfactory, and yet I think it would strike even the
strongest believer in the principle of democracy that the rule of the
majority ought scarcely to extend to dress. I admit that the yoke of
fashion which we bowed to was very onerous, and yet it was true that if
we were brave enough, as few indeed were, we might defy it; but with the
style of dress determined by the administration, and only certain styles
made, you must either follow the taste of the majority or lie abed. Why
do you laugh? Is it not so?"
"We were smiling," replied the superintendent, "on account of a slight
misapprehension on your part. When I said that we regulated questions of
dress, I meant that we regulated them not collectively, by majority, but
individually, each for himself or herself."
"But I don't see how you can," I persisted. "The business of producing
fabrics and of making them into garments is carried on by the Government.
Does not that imply, practically, a governmental control or initiative in
fashions of dress?"
"Dear me, no!" exclaimed the superintendent. "It is evident, Mr. West, as
indeed the histories say, that governmental action carried with it in
your day an arbitrary implication which it does not now. The Government
is actually now what it nominally was in the America of your day--the
servant, tool, and instrument by which the people give effect to their
will, itself being without will. The popular will is expressed in two
ways, which are quite distinct and relate to different provinces: First,
collectively, by majority, in regard to blended, mutually involved
interests, such as the large economic and political concerns of the
community; second, personally, by each individual for himself or herself
in the furtherance of private and self-regarding matters. The Government
is not more absolutely the servant of the collective will in regard to
the blended interests of the community than it is of the individual
convenience in personal matters. It is at once the august representative
of all in general concerns, and everybody's agent, errand boy, and
factotum for all private ends. Nothing is too high or too low, too great
or too little, for it to do for us.
"The dressmaking department holds its vast provision of fabrics and
machinery at the absolute disposition of the whims of every man or woman
in the nation. You can go to one of the stores and order any costume of
which a historical description exists, from the days of Eve to yesterday,
or you can furnish a design of your own invention for a brand-new
costume, designating any material at present existing, and it will be
sent home to you in less time than any nineteenth-century dressmaker ever
even promised to fill an order. Really, talking of this, I want you to
see our garment-making machines in operation. Our paper garments, of
course, are seamless, and made wholly by machinery. The apparatus being
adjustable to any measure, you can have a costume turned out for you
complete while you are looking over the machine. There are, of course,
some general styles and shapes that are usually popular, and the stores
keep a supply of them on hand, but that is for the convenience of the
people, not of the department, which holds itself always ready to follow
the initiative of any citizen and provide anything ordered in the least
possible time."
"Then anybody can set the fashion?" I said.
"Anybody can set it, but whether it is followed depends on whether it is
a good one, and really has some new point in respect of convenience or
beauty; otherwise it certainly will not become a fashion. Its vogue will
be precisely proportioned to the merit the popular taste recognizes in
it, just as if it were an invention in mechanics. If a new idea in dress
has any merit in it, it is taken up with great promptness, for our people
are extremely interested in enhancing personal beauty by costume, and the
absence of any arbitrary standards of style such as fashion set for you
leaves us on the alert for attractions and novelties in shape and color.
It is in variety of effect that our mode of dressing seems indeed to
differ most from yours. Your styles were constantly being varied by the
edicts of fashion, but as only one style was tolerated at a time, you had
only a successive and not a simultaneous variety, such as we have. I
should imagine that this uniformity of style, extending, as I understand
it often did, to fabric, color, and shape alike, must have caused your
great assemblages to present a depressing effect of sameness.
"That was a fact fully admitted in my day," I replied. "The artists were
the enemies of fashion, as indeed all sensible people were, but
resistance was in vain. Do you know, if I were to return to the
nineteenth century, there is perhaps nothing else I could tell my
contemporaries of the changes you have made that would so deeply impress
them as the information that you had broken the scepter of fashion, that
there were no longer any arbitrary standards in dress recognized, and
that no style had any other vogue that might be given it by individual
recognition of its merits. That most of the other yokes humanity wore
might some day be broken, the more hopeful of us believed, but the yoke
of fashion we never expected to be freed from, unless perhaps in heaven."
"The reign of fashion, as the history books call it, always seemed to me
one of the most utterly incomprehensible things about the old order,"
said Edith. "It would seem that it must have had some great force behind
it to compel such abject submission to a rule so tyrannical. And yet
there seems to have been no force at all used. Do tell us what the secret
was, Julian?"
"Don't ask me," I protested. "It seemed to be some fell enchantment that
we were subject to--that is all I know. Nobody professed to understand
why we did as we did. Can't you tell us," I added, turning to the
superintendent--"how do you moderns diagnose the fashion mania that made
our lives such a burden to us?"
"Since you appeal to me," replied our companion, "I may say that the
historians explain the dominion of fashion in your age as the natural
result of a disparity of economic conditions prevailing in a community in
which rigid distinctions of caste had ceased to exist. It resulted from
two factors: the desire of the common herd to imitate the superior class,
and the desire of the superior class to protect themselves from that
imitation and preserve distinction of appearance. In times and countries
where class was caste, and fixed by law or iron custom, each caste had
its distinctive dress, to imitate which was not allowed to another class.
Consequently fashions were stationary. With the rise of democracy, the
legal protection of class distinctions was abolished, while the actual
disparity in social ranks still existed, owing to the persistence of
economic inequalities. It was now free for all to imitate the superior
class, and thus seem at least to be as good as it, and no kind of
imitation was so natural and easy as dress. First, the socially ambitious
led off in this imitation; then presently the less pretentious were
constrained to follow their example, to avoid an apparent confession of
social inferiority; till, finally, even the philosophers had to follow
the herd and conform to the fashion, to avoid being conspicuous by an
exceptional appearance."
"I can see," said Edith, "how social emulation should make the masses
imitate the richer and superior class, and how the fashions should in
this way be set; but why were they changed so often, when it must have
been so terribly expensive and troublesome to make the changes?"
"For the reason," answered the superintendent, "that the only way the
superior class could escape their imitators and preserve their
distinction in dress was by adopting constantly new fashions, only to
drop them for still newer ones as soon as they were imitated.--Does it
seem to you, Mr. West, that this explanation corresponds with the facts
as you observed them?"
"Entirely so," I replied. "It might be added, too, that the changes in
fashions were greatly fomented and assisted by the self-interest of vast
industrial and commercial interests engaged in purveying the materials of
dress and personal belongings. Every change, by creating a demand for new
materials and rendering those in use obsolete, was what we called good
for trade, though if tradesmen were unlucky enough to be caught by a
sudden change of fashion with a lot of goods on hand it meant ruin to
them. Great losses of this sort, indeed, attended every change in
fashion."
"But we read that there were fashions in many things besides dress," said
Edith.
"Certainly," said the superintendent. "Dress was the stronghold and main
province of fashion because imitation was easiest and most effective
through dress, but in nearly everything that pertained to the habits of
living, eating, drinking, recreation, to houses, furniture, horses and
carriages, and servants, to the manner of bowing even, and shaking hands,
to the mode of eating food and taking tea, and I don't know what
else--there were fashions which must be followed, and were changed as
soon as they were followed. It was indeed a sad, fantastic race, and, Mr.
West's contemporaries appear to have fully realized it; but as long as
society was made up of unequals with no caste barriers to prevent
imitation, the inferiors were bound to ape the superiors, and the
superiors were bound to baffle imitation, so far as possible, by seeking
ever-fresh devices for expressing their superiority."
"In short," I said, "our tedious sameness in dress and manners appears to
you to have been the logical result of our lack of equality in
conditions."
"Precisely so," answered the superintendent. "Because you were not equal,
you made yourself miserable and ugly in the attempt to seem so. The
aesthetic equivalent of the moral wrong of inequality was the artistic
abomination of uniformity. On the other hand, equality creates an
atmosphere which kills imitation, and is pregnant with originality, for
every one acts out himself, having nothing to gain by imitating any one
else."