Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1871-01-06

| street, new York. lhe Ledger
pays more for original contributions
than any other periodical in the
world. 1t will publish none but
the very, very best. Its moral tone
is the purest, and it's circulation the
largest. Everybody who takes it is
happier for having it.
Short and Long Street Dresses,
Gail Hamilton writes in Uarper's
Buzuor..
ely swiftly round, yc wheels of
time, and bring the day when So
ciety shall have settled upon some
general street dress, simple, grace
ful, convenient and unengaging, and
shall leave to individual taste only
choice OF material, color, and sub
ordinate details. Then you shall
not have to alter except to freshen.
Then you shall be pointed or round
cd or squared according to your
liking, and shall stay so. Then
you shall not spend your time in
pulling off last years velvet, but
satin-to borrow P,mch's wit
shall be sat in till it is frayed out
of existence.
But even as things are we are
very comfortable. / have thought,
indeed, that we were verging to-
ward the millennium of dress. Bar
ring the excess of trimming, it
seems to me there never could have
been time when dress was more
tavorab.e'to women than it is now.
With rubber boots and Waterproof
for storms, with light, picturesque
hats, with small short skirts and
sleeved over-garments, and breath
permitting bodices, and styles so
various that scarcely anything is
strihingly questionable, what doth
hinder that woman should eat and
, drink, and walk and be merry:
Newspaper people, indeed, talk of
dress reform; but there shall no re-
form be given them save the grad
ual reform | have suggested, and
that will come imperceptibly, and
only as we slowly gain more cult
walton and higher and finer life.
Our dress now is fully up to our
social life.
And here come the costumcrs,
and faunt long skirts in our faces
once more. DO blame the costu-
mers? Not /. They have their
living to get, and must invent or
select continually. But if the wo-
men Of this country, having once
tasted the freedom of short dresses,
shall be mean spirited enough to 90
into long ones again at the dictate
OF any costumcr under the sun, they
have themselves and nobody else
to blame. "A pretty thing it will be
for them to talk about making laws,
if they have not sense enough and
spirit to keep out of the mud! A
fine thing to be republican sover-
eign when you have not independ-
ence enough to resist the fiat Of a
foreign tyrant as to the cut Of your
gown! For here is no question of
thinking about your dress. You
can walk just as we'll with three
f1ounces as with none; but long
dress interfcres with the energies,
the activities, the safety and the
health of every day. A long dress
in the street means Inconvenience,
untidiness, discomfort, waste, in
dolcnce, repression, cramped mus
clcs, subordination and slavery.
If women reinvest themselves in
trailing skirts, they deserve all the
evils which may bcfall them. If
women relinquish their short suits,
may their husbands tyranize over
them and abuse them forever
May the women's rights women be
forever forced to see men legislate
and women sit still May the anti
women's rights women be forced to
vote at the polls and to serve in the
jury-boS! May husbands ever con
troll all the incomes of their wives,
and may wives be forever disabled
from dispos;ng Of their own pro-
perty. May the courts always have
the power of dispossessing a mother
of her child, and imposing upon it a
guardianship foreign to her will
May Bridget in the kitchen forever
prick the pies with her hair-rin,
and John .Chinaman moisten the
pie-crust from his mouth May Mr..
Thomas Mast portray the Coming
Woman doing general housework,
and DR.. Nathan Allen continue to
publish in the religious newspapers
cheertully statistical articles on the
decrease OF the population in New
England! May Laura ever be obliged
to pave the way to Frederick's purse
with toothsome viands. and never
know what it is to be joint sovereign
of the woman's kingdom, and never
know that there is any woman's
kingdom May sewing machines
be broken past remedy, and ruffies
come in like flood, and men wear
seven ruiiies to one shirt, and the
bosom factories stop work. and all
the laundries dry up! May women
receive one-quarter the wages of
men and do twice the work, and
kid gloves go up to five dollars =
pair, and tear out on the back of
the hand the first time they are put
on.
In short, may women be held a
subject rare when they shall have
provided themselves one, and be
oppressed and spoiled evermore;
for they will certainly deserve it if
they 90 back to the leeks and onions
of Egypt after having eaten the
mamma and quails of the promised
land.
Long skirts, indeed :"
New ARCTIC DISCOVERIES. The
German Arctic Expedition, which
returned from the Polar Sea this fall,
has published the results Of its re
searches. The most important re-
suit Of its explorations was the dis
covery of new land, about thirty
nautical miles east Of Spitzbergen,
and situated north of the seventy
seventh degree Of latitude north.
This new territory is much larger