The strangling hold which the Paris couturiers had secured on the
American woman in their absolute dictation as to her fashions in dress,
had interested Edward Bok for some time. As he studied the question, he
was constantly amazed at the audacity with which these French
dressmakers and milliners, often themselves of little taste and scant
morals, cracked the whip, and the docility with which the American woman
blindly and unintelligently danced to their measure. The deeper he went
into the matter, too, the more deceit and misrepresentation did he find
in the situation. It was inconceivable that the American woman should
submit to what was being imposed upon her if she knew the facts. He
determined that she should. The process of Americanization going on
within him decided him to expose the Paris conditions and advocate and
present American-designed fashions for women.
The Journal engaged the best-informed woman in Paris frankly to lay open
the situation to the American women; she proved that the designs sent
over by the so-called Paris arbiters of fashion were never worn by the
Frenchwoman of birth and good taste; that they were especially designed
and specifically intended for "the bizarre American trade," as one
polite Frenchman called it; and that the only women in Paris who wore
these grotesque and often immoderate styles were of the demimonde.
This article was the opening gun of the campaign, and this was quickly
followed by a second equally convincing--both articles being written
from the inside of the gilded circles of the couturiers' shops. Madame
Sarah Bernhardt was visiting the United States at the time, and Bok
induced the great actress to verify the statements printed. She went
farther and expressed amazement at the readiness with which the American
woman had been duped; and indicated her horror on seeing American women
of refined sensibilities and position dressed in the gowns of the
declasse street-women of Paris. The somewhat sensational nature of the
articles attracted the attention of the American newspapers, which
copied and commented on them; the gist of them was cabled over to Paris,
and, of course, the Paris couturiers denied the charges. But their
denials were in general terms; and no convincing proof of the falsity of
the charges was furnished. The French couturier simply resorted to a
shrug of the shoulder and a laugh, implying that the accusations were
beneath his notice.
Bok now followed the French models of dresses and millinery to the
United States, and soon found that for every genuine Parisian model sold
in the large cities at least ten were copies, made in New York shops,
but with the labels of the French dressmakers and milliners sewed on
them. He followed the labels to their source, and discovered a firm one
of whose specialties was the making of these labels bearing the names of
the leading French designers. They were manufactured by the gross, and
sold in bundles to the retailers. Bok secured a list of the buyers of
these labels and found that they represented some of the leading
merchants throughout the country. All these facts he published. The
retailers now sprang up in arms and denied the charges, but again the
denials were in general terms. Bok had the facts and they knew it. These
facts were too specific and too convincing to be controverted.
The editor had now presented a complete case before the women of America
as to the character of the Paris-designed fashions and the manner in
which women were being hoodwinked in buying imitations.
Meanwhile, he had engaged the most expert designers in the world of
women's dress and commissioned them to create American designs. He sent
one of his editors to the West to get first-hand motifs from Indian
costumes and adapt them as decorative themes for dress embroideries.
Three designers searched the Metropolitan Museum for new and artistic
ideas, and he induced his company to install a battery of four-color
presses in order that the designs might be given in all the beauty of
their original colors. For months designers and artists worked; he had
the designs passed upon by a board of judges composed of New York women
who knew good clothes, and then he began their publication.
The editor of The New York Times asked Bok to conduct for that newspaper
a prize contest for the best American-designed dresses and hats, and
edit a special supplement presenting them in full colors, the prizes to
be awarded by a jury of six of the leading New York women best versed in
matters of dress. Hundreds of designs were submitted, the best were
selected, and the supplement issued under the most successful auspices.
In his own magazine, Bok published pages of American-designed fashions:
their presence in the magazine was advertised far and wide; conventions
of dressmakers were called to consider the salability of
domestic-designed fashions; and a campaign with the slogan "American
Fashions for American Women" was soon in full swing.
But there it ended. The women looked the designs over with interest, as
they did all designs of new clothes, and paid no further attention to
them. The very fact that they were of American design prejudiced the
women against them. America never had designed good clothes, they
argued: she never would. Argument availed naught. The Paris germ was
deep-rooted in the feminine mind of America: the women acknowledged that
they were, perhaps, being hoodwinked by spurious French dresses and
hats; that the case presented by Bok seemed convincing enough, but the
temptation to throw a coat over a sofa or a chair to expose a Parisian
label to the eyes of some other woman was too great; there was always a
gambling chance that her particular gown, coat, or hat was an actual
Paris creation.
Bok called upon the American woman to come out from under the yoke of
the French couturiers, show her patriotism, and encourage American
design. But it was of no use. He talked with women on every hand; his
mail was full of letters commending him for his stand; but as for actual
results, there were none. One of his most intelligent woman-friends
finally summed up the situation for him:
"You can rail against the Paris domination all you like; you can expose
it for the fraud that it is, and we know that it is; but it is all to no
purpose, take my word. When it comes to the question of her personal
adornment, a woman employs no reason; she knows no logic. She knows that
the adornment of her body is all that she has to match the other woman
and outdo her, and to attract the male, and nothing that you can say
will influence her a particle. I know this all seems incomprehensible to
you as a man, but that is the feminine nature. You are trying to fight
something that is unfightable."
"Has the American woman no instinct of patriotism, then?" asked Bok.
"Not the least," was the answer, "when it comes to her adornment. What
Paris says, she will do, blindly and unintelligently if you will, but
she will do it. She will sacrifice her patriotism; she will even justify
a possible disregard of the decencies. Look at the present Parisian
styles. They are absolutely indecent. Women know it, but they follow
them just the same, and they will. It is all very unpleasant to say
this, but it is the truth and you will find it out. Your effort, fine as
it is, will bear no fruit."
Wherever Bok went, women upon whose judgment he felt he could rely, told
him, in effect, the same thing. They were all regretful, in some cases
ashamed of their sex, universally apologetic; but one and all declared
that such is "the feminine nature," and Bok would only have his trouble
for nothing.
And so it proved. For a period, the retail shops were more careful in
the number of genuine French models of gowns and hats which they
exhibited, and the label firm confessed that its trade had fallen off.
But this was only temporary. Within a year after The Journal stopped the
campaign, baffled and beaten, the trade in French labels was greater
than ever, hundreds of French models were sold that had never crossed
the ocean, the American woman was being hoodwinked on every hand, and
the reign of the French couturier was once more supreme.
There was no disguising the fact that the case was hopeless, and Bok
recognized and accepted the inevitable. He had, at least, the
satisfaction of having made an intelligent effort to awaken the American
woman to her unintelligent submission. But she refused to be awakened.
She preferred to be a tool: to be made a fool of.
Bok's probe into the feminine nature had been keenly disappointing. He
had earnestly tried to serve the American woman, and he had failed. But
he was destined to receive a still greater and deeper disappointment on
his next excursion into the feminine nature, although, this time, he was
to win.
During his investigations into women's fashions, he had unearthed the
origin of the fashionable aigrette, the most desired of all the
feathered possessions of womankind. He had been told of the cruel
torture of the mother-heron, who produced the beautiful aigrette only in
her period of maternity and who was cruelly slaughtered, usually left to
die slowly rather than killed, leaving her whole nest of baby-birds to
starve while they awaited the return of the mother-bird.
Bok was shown the most heart-rending photographs portraying the butchery
of the mother and the starvation of her little ones. He collected all
the photographs that he could secure, had the most graphic text written
to them, and began their publication. He felt certain that the mere
publication of the frightfully convincing photographs would be enough to
arouse the mother-instinct in every woman and stop the wearing of the
so-highly prized feather. But for the second time in his attempt to
reform the feminine nature he reckoned beside the mark.
He published a succession of pages showing the frightful cost at which
the aigrette was secured. There was no challenging the actual facts as
shown by the photographic lens: the slaughter of the mother-bird, and
the starving baby-birds; and the importers of the feather wisely
remained quiet, not attempting to answer Bok's accusations. Letters
poured in upon the editor from Audubon Society workers; from lovers of
birds, and from women filled with the humanitarian instinct. But Bok
knew that the answer was not with those few: the solution lay with the
larger circle of American womanhood from which he did not hear.
He waited for results. They came. But they were not those for which he
had striven. After four months of his campaign, he learned from the
inside of the importing-houses which dealt in the largest stocks of
aigrettes in the United States that the demand for the feather had more
than quadrupled! Bok was dumbfounded! He made inquiries in certain
channels from which he knew he could secure the most reliable
information, and after all the importers had been interviewed, the
conviction was unescapable that just in proportion as Bok had dwelt upon
the desirability of the aigrette as the hallmark of wealth and fashion,
upon its expense, and the fact that women regarded it as the last word
in feminine adornment, he had by so much made these facts familiar to
thousands of women who had never before known of them, and had created
the desire to own one of the precious feathers.
Bok could not and would not accept these conclusions. It seemed to him
incredible that women would go so far as this in the question of
personal adornment. He caused the increased sales to be traced from
wholesaler to retailer, and from retailer to customer, and was amazed at
the character and standing of the latter. He had a number of those
buyers who lived in adjacent cities, privately approached and
interviewed, and ascertained that, save in two instances, they were all
his readers, had seen the gruesome pictures he had presented, and then
had deliberately purchased the coveted aigrette.
Personally again he sought the most intelligent of his woman-friends,
talked with scores of others, and found himself facing the same trait in
feminine nature which he had encountered in his advocacy of American
fashions. But this time it seemed to Bok that the facts he had presented
went so much deeper.
"It will be hard for you to believe," said one of his most trusted
woman-friends. "I grant your arguments: there is no gainsaying them. But
you are fighting the same thing again that you do not understand: the
feminine nature that craves outer adornment will secure it at any cost,
even at the cost of suffering."
"Yes," argued Bok. "But if there is one thing above everything else that
we believe a woman feels and understands, it is the mother-instinct. Do
you mean to tell me that it means nothing to her that these birds are
killed in their period of motherhood, and that a whole nest of starving
baby-birds is the price of every aigrette?"
"I won't say that this does not weigh with a woman. It does, naturally.
But when it comes to her possession of an ornament of beauty, as
beautiful as the aigrette, it weighs with her, but it doesn't tip the
scale against her possession of it. I am sorry to have to say this to
you, but it is a fact. A woman will regret that the mother-bird must be
tortured and her babies starve, but she will have the aigrette. She
simply trains herself to forget the origin.
"Take my own case. You will doubtless be shocked when I tell you that I
was perfectly aware of the conditions under which the aigrette is
obtained before you began your exposure of the method. But did it
prevent my purchase of one? Not at all. Why? Because I am a woman: I
realize that no head ornament will set off my hair so well as an
aigrette. Say I am cruel if you like. I wish the heron-mother didn't
have to be killed or the babies starve, but, Mr. Bok, I must have my
beautiful aigrette!"
Bok was frankly astounded: he had certainly probed deep this time into
the feminine nature. With every desire and instinct to disbelieve the
facts, the deeper his inquiries went, the stronger the evidence rolled
up: there was no gainsaying it; no sense in a further disbelief of it.
But Bok was determined that this time he would not fail. His sense of
justice and protection to the mother-bird and her young was now fully
aroused. He resolved that he would, by compulsion, bring about what he
had failed to do by persuasion. He would make it impossible for women to
be untrue to their most sacred instinct. He sought legal talent, had a
bill drawn up making it a misdemeanor to import, sell, purchase, or wear
an aigrette. Armed with this measure, and the photographs and articles
which he had published, he sought and obtained the interest and promise
of support of the most influential legislators in several States. He
felt a sense of pride in his own sex that he had no trouble in winning
the immediate interest of every legislator with whom he talked.
Where he had failed with women, he was succeeding with men! The
outrageous butchery of the birds and the circumstances under which they
were tortured appealed with direct force to the sporting instinct in
every man, and aroused him. Bok explained to each that he need expect no
support for such a measure from women save from the members of the
Audubon Societies, and a few humanitarian women and bird-lovers. Women,
as a whole, he argued from his experiences, while they would not go so
far as openly to oppose such a measure, for fear of public comment,
would do nothing to further its passage, for in their hearts they
preferred failure to success for the legislation. They had frankly told
him so: he was not speaking from theory.
In one State after another Bok got into touch with legislators. He
counselled, in each case, a quiet passage for the measure instead of one
that would draw public attention to it.
Meanwhile, a strong initiative had come from the Audubon Societies
throughout the country, and from the National Association of Audubon
Societies, at New York. This latter society also caused to be introduced
bills of its own to the same and in various legislatures, and here Bok
had a valuable ally. It was a curious fact that the Audubon officials
encountered their strongest resistance in Bok's own State: Pennsylvania.
But Bok's personal acquaintance with legislators in his Keystone State
helped here materially.
The demand for the aigrette constantly increased and rose to hitherto
unknown figures. In one State where Bok's measure was pending before the
legislature, he heard of the coming of an unusually large shipment of
aigrettes to meet this increased demand. He wired the legislator in
charge of the measure apprising him of this fact, of what he intended to
do, and urging speed in securing the passage of the bill. Then he caused
the shipment to be seized at the dock on the ground of illegal
importation.
The importing firm at once secured an injunction restraining the
seizure. Bok replied by serving a writ setting the injunction aside. The
lawyers of the importers got busy, of course, but meanwhile the
legislator had taken advantage of a special evening session, had the
bill passed, and induced the governor to sign it, the act taking effect
at once.
This was exactly what Bok had been playing for. The aigrettes were now
useless; they could not be reshipped to another State, they could not be
offered for sale. The suit was dropped, and Bok had the satisfaction of
seeing the entire shipment, valued at $160,000, destroyed. He had not
saved the lives of the mother-birds, but, at least, he had prevented
hundreds of American women from wearing the hallmark of torture.
State after State now passed an aigrette-prohibition law until fourteen
of the principal States, including practically all the large cities,
fell into line.
Later, the National Association of Audubon Societies had introduced into
the United States Congress and passed a bill prohibiting the importation
of bird-feathers into the country, thus bringing a Federal law into
existence.
Bok had won his fight, it is true, but he derived little satisfaction
from the character of his victory. His ideal of womanhood had received a
severe jolt. Women had revealed their worst side to him, and he did not
like the picture. He had appealed to what he had been led to believe was
the most sacred instinct in a woman's nature. He received no response.
Moreover, he saw the deeper love for personal vanity and finery
absolutely dominate the mother-instinct. He was conscious that something
had toppled off its pedestal which could never be replaced.
He was aware that his mother's words, when he accepted his editorial
position, were coming terribly true: "I am sorry you are going to take
this position. It will cost you the high ideal you have always held of
your mother's sex. But a nature, as is the feminine nature, wholly
swayed inwardly by emotion, and outwardly influenced by an insatiate
love for personal adornment, will never stand the analysis you will give
it."
He realized that he was paying a high price for his success. Such
experiences as these--and, unfortunately, they were only two of
several--were doubtless in his mind when, upon his retirement, the
newspapers clamored for his opinions of women. "No, thank you," he said
to one and all, "not a word."
He did not give his reasons.
He never will.