The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-07-10
VIEW TORk LSJMS.
NV IVIth' IWIJ y IoOH,
The Trade in False IInir.

hess III lalse halr is carried on in this city, and
yet for the last year more especially, ever since
the impetus given to it by the debut of the
blondes, several tons of human hair have been
appraised by the New York Gus tom House
for the exclusive use of this city. Between two
and three millions of dollars have, during the
past year, been spent for false hair in this city
alone. The number of hair merchants ranges
between five and six hundred and these help to
distribute the tOnsorial tons all over the city
and its suburbs. As an evidence that this trade
In hair has greatly increased of late, one has only
to take jaunt of inspection along Broadway
Where are the bald feminine brows that
we beheld a twelvemonth ago? They are gone.
all gone, those "old, familiar faces" and for
one bless the tonsorial art that it has been able
to effect such a consummation. The badness is
not cured, it is only concealed Some months
ago read the startling announcement in q gos-
slipping paper that the Empress Eugenie was
growing fat and bald. A few weeks after l read
that, owing to some mysterious art, her head was
covered with as splendid cheUelttre as graced it
in her first youth. Our New York feminines
have not discovered Eugenies secret, but they
have rushed extensively into false hair, which
they use up annually by the ton and the mil
lions of dollars worth. The knobby foreheads
and white-showing patches that year ago dis
figured the New York female of a certain age
have all disappeared, concealed by hirsute in
genuities.
There are few kinds of stores in New York
in which false hair is not sold. You cannot get
it perhaps in dry-goods store, nor in book
store, nor in confectioner's, nor even in gro
Gerry; but you can get it at a milliner's, where it
regularly figures along with the bonnets.
Braids coils, curls twists, and chignons all
strung in line in all their bewildering varie-
ties. Many of the milliners on Fourteenth
street and Ninth street have both a cap and a
capillary department, and not few of their
fair customers come as much to inspect their
collections of blonde hair rs their display of
bonncts. This hirsute tendency among the
feminine hat-makers is of recent growth in New
York. but it has struck lie (tair ile) for good
many OF the speculatriXes.
The Broadway prices asked for these various
combinations Of hair are, of course, much the
dearest; and they are not the most conscientious
places, either in which to purchase hair The
chair" sold there is too often composed of any
thing else but hair. If Mrs. Glass were occu-
pied With this subject, and giving capillary in
stead of culinary advice, | suppose she would
say ''first catch your h0ir-a thing not SO easily
accomplished under the circumstances. Flax,
sewing silk MANILA, old rope, very finely
combed and oiled, are a few of the substances
you get for real hair In fact, real hair, par
ticularly of golden hue, is as difficult to pur-
chase at any of these Broadway places real
whisky is; so that whether you pursue blonde or
Bourbon you equally liable to be deceived.
And even when the hair is undoubtedly human
it is too often cut from a corpse; so that while
the unsophisticated world is admiring the
beauty of your chignOn you, who have mean
while penetrated the secret of its source, will
feel as though you were carrying dead-house
oho vi urp in Snirt with
Paul, ''Who will deliver me from this body of
death ?"
Chemists and natural philosophers talk good
deal about capillary attraction but the greatest
instance of capillary attraction is that which
blonde hair possesses for the American female
of to-day, and especially for the New York
female. 1t is refreshing to meet with a brunette
on Broadway, but if you do, you may be sure
she has bottle of aurferous tncture in her
pocket. 1t may be seldom that you meet full
wigged woman, but ninety-nine -hundredths of
the women you meet have something wiggy
about them. I have seen one or two glorious
exceptions to this rule. | have seen a New
York woman after good-temperedly enduring
much badinage on the eXuberance of her locks,
make every other woman present turn pale
with envy by dsentangling those locks from
their intricacy of combs and allowing them to
fall around her, natural veil, almost
to her feet. No deception there, at
all events and that woman was never
troubled again with the expression of any un-
gallont suspicious. But cases like these are the
granu exceptions. The New York woman,
rule patronizes the dealer in false hair, and pays
him from $15 to $40 per ounce for satisfying
her demands. The highest priced hair is the
white, much affected by extremely old ladies,
who at deaths door will supply themselves with
yoluptuous chignon Next in value to the
white come the blonde, the golden, the faxen,
the auburn, and the red After these come the
darker varieties, the shades of brown and black.
Hair that is naturally curly and wavy brings in
New York mach as $40 per ounce. Mean
while the hair-dressers complain that their trade
has entirely failed them. They say that the in
creasing demand for ladies maids who are sup
posed to understand the art of dressing hair,
has all but caused them to close up shop.
great deal of the hair sold in this city is
brought from Paris. a good deal is not. \
large proportion is brough. from New England
and from the West. where ja-t as lovely heads
of hair become acquainted " "a the shears as in
any of the countries of Europe. 1t is sold in
various localities OF the East aud West for eight
dollars pound There is certain hair dealer
in BroadWay-one of the few conscientious ones
who would not deviate from the truth by a
hairs breadth. we will say-Who has in his pos
e:son hair fifty inches in length. HAIR half
that length Is quite common. but hair three teet
long is rather rare and greatly priced. There is
a certain dermatologist in Bond street who pro-
fesses to restore lost hair and who, II he Is a
quack, is among the conscientious ones. lie
is short, muscular and mulatto-like; his