The Kanzas news., 1857-11-07
The KanzaS News.
NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. =, 1857.
Who Spends the Money P

site excess of yituperatlve injustice. We
are treating them, IN fact, very much as the
African savage treats his Fetish. In the
times of our prosperity, we could not suth-
ciently adulate these lovely and omnipotent
beings. We could refuse them nothing
The best seats at hotel tables, the only seats
in railway cars, the deeencies of the steam
boat decks, and the decorum of the steam
boat supper were alike reserved for them
We exacted of our police only one duty, to
escort our wives and drughters daintily
through the perils of the streets-and We
expected of all men only one virtue, that of
an almost servile courtesy to the ladies. But
adversely has oyertaken us, and all is
changed. The pretty creatures of yesterday
are the "extravagant syrens" of to-day
Miss Flora McFlimsey is the type of her
thoughtless and treacherous sex, and the
piteous cry of nothing to pay" which
comes up from all the desperate debtors of
the land, we declare to be but the echo of
the iniquitous female complaint of ''noth
ing TO wear" The argument of this alter
alton in the tone of the men is not a new one.
It is as old, indeed, as the troubles OFFS gar
den Adam and his wife, The man has got
himself into scrape, and the woman must
be his excuse. She was born to be his
"help-meet,'' and if she can't save him
from the consequences of his folly, at least
he may throw on her shoulders the blame.
Whose fault it is, by the way, that those
lovely shoulders SO often need something
thrown on them, he does not, in his furry
of selfish concern, particularly pause to in
quire. There let the blame fall, and rest if
it may.
Now we do not pretend to deny that GER
tain classes of women in America have of
late years been living to dress, to drive and
to dance. We do not pretend to deny that
an order of frivolous females has fowered
out of the soil of this New World, remark
able among the simpletons of the earth for
an exclusive development of all sorts of ex-
travagant faults. We do not pretend to de-
ny that the vulgar aims and the vulgar am
bitions of reckless and money seeking men
have been fairly matched among US by the
equally vulgar aims and the equally vulgar
ambitions of reckless and money-spending
women. But we do deny most emphati
cally that the women of America, or that
the women of New York, are as a body
liable to the charge of recklessness and ex-
travagance, or as body responsible in any
appreciable degree for the present calami-
ties of the financial and the commercial
world. This very City of Gotham, where
of the name is a synonym throughout the
land for all manner of gorgeous follies, and
costly absurdities and expensive immorah
ties, teens at this moment with quiet, low
ing, sincere and honorable women, who
regulate their own households, and share
with their husbands the anxieties of his in
dustrious career, and tighten by their coun-
sci as well as by their sympathy the bur-
dens of his perplexing affairs. Hundreds
and thousands of these women there are,
and in every rank of life, in the circles of
fashion as well as in the homes of mechanic
toll, whom the trials of this critical season
will find as the trials of prosperity have
found "Nobly planned, to warn, to
comfort and command"
As the skies darken, as the need of re-
trenchment makes itself more sharply and
more universally felt, as one luxury after
another must be put down by the opulent,
and one comfort after another sacrificed by
the merely well-to-do, this truth will be
nobly vindicated in thousand households.
No man who knows the sex and their ways
will doubt that the Cashmere will be relin
quished, to say the least, quite as eheerfully
as the Morgan horse,' and that Mrs.
Smith will find it quite as easy to counter
mand her soiree as Mr.. Smith to resign his
membership at the Club. The statistics of
the Past on this subject are eloquent enough
to be of some use, perhaps, to those who
doubt about the Future, and who tremble
afresh for Wall-street whenever they think
of Fifth-ayenue.
1t has become commonplace of mis-
ogymist defamation, for instance, to aver
that the excessive importations of super
f1uous goods from foreign countries" to
which a certain set of economists choose to
trace our present disorders, have been pro-
voked by the extravaganza of our women.
Crinoline, MORE gloves and feathers, fans
and furbelows, kickshaws and gewgaws,
these have ruined us ! These have drained
US of our Western wheat and our Califor-
man gold, to give US in return only hotel
fiirtations and watering-pla polkas. Let
US see how this matter stands. For the
fiscal year 1866, the importations of silk
goods into this country amounted to $685.,
20O,651. Truly s'parlous" sum and a
tremendously effective figure of speech for a
Sermon on the times or a lecture on the
ladies'. But statistics are like puddings;
the proof of their value is only to be got at
by discussion. Out of these millions of
dollars worth of silk, there are certain mas
-cutiaities to be deducted. We must abstract
therefrom all the sleeve and skirt-linings of
some four millions of male coats, all the
'cravats and waistcoats of silk that the
American men from Maine to California
conlriye in a twelyemonth to consume. re-
membering when we make the sum, that
the ''black satin waisteoat'' may almost be
considered as national costume" in GER
tam portions of our beloved country all
the mystical ribbons and aprons of all the
orders and Lodges which swarm in the
land; all the flags and banners in which We
Americans so extravagantly delight, togeth
er with such silken xanifies In the ,zav of