The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1874-05-08
For Good or for Evils

Every good gilt contains the elements OF
curse. Perhaps the dark side of all laborsav-
ing machines is that they stimulate people to
do more work instead of less paradoxical as
that may SC und. 1t is tie old story of not
being able TO let well enough alone, like the
frog in the fable, who, not being content with
temporary remarkabilty, kept on making
himself more so, till he died of being remark
able. 1t is not probable that labor-saving
inventions will ever bring about the Utopia of
physical leisure in this country; at least not
until there is less greed among us for killing
several birds with one stone Now if you
start out with the intention of killing only
two birds, and if you should have been lucky
enough to kill them both with one stone, de-
sist, and turn to other pursuits, that would
surely in one sense be labor saving. But who,
having once killed two birds with one stone,
| can resist the temptation of trying to kill two
more with another stone, and if he is success
full in that, can he refrain from trying to kill
three at one stroke? But what is gained,
looking at it from the labor-saving point of
view?
The truth is, that Americans understand
labor-saving inventions only as facilities to
enable them to do more work in a shorter
length of time than they could by the old pro-
cess. But properly, your machine is only Ia
bor-saving in the ratio in which you reduce the
work to be done upon it.
Take the sewing machine as familiar IL
lustration Of this argument. In the old days
of hand-sewing how pathetically women used
to:bemoan their fates! Then, the sewing
machine came In as ifit were the herald of
the millennium. There were never to be any
more songs of the shirt. All the sewing was
to be done up, in an emergency, by that good
Fairy of the Household, in trice, before you
could snap your fingers and say Jack Robin
son. o, what oceans of time women were
going to have for every conceivable project
under the sun! But straightway they wheel
ed around and almost turned the blessing
into curse. -t ..--
instead of doing as they had promised to
do, getting through the sewing and having
time for other things, they used sewing-ma
chimes to turn every article OF dress into
mass of unheard of elaboration. What miles
of braiding and yards of tucking and forests
of founcing, the sewing machine is RESPONSE
BILE forl 1t is responsible, too for the elaborate
ness of style, finish and ornament which has
distinguished the fashions since its advent.
To it we owe the utter extinction of simplc-
ity in feminine dress. 1t was so easy to
make up simple dress upon it like those
worn, perforce, in the old days of the needle,
in very short time, that the temptation to
put on a few folds or ruffles was not to be re-
sisted by any woman of artistic tendencies
and that means rinety nine women out of
every hundred, for they are nearly all born
with more or less of the artistic instinct for
adorning and beautifying-and this trait of
feminine character, for lack of proper train
ing and proper channels of outlet, becomes in
woman one OF her faults when 1t should have
been one of her virtues.
Now, the curse of the day is the burdening
of all feminine clothing with mass of su-
perfuous ornamentation which costs the life
and health of woman and is death to all her
higher mental aspirations. IE
Ii the sewing-machine were used as orig
inally intended-as a helper to work off all
the sewing of the week in few hours, then
it would indeed be blessing.
Why not make it so? Why not take new
departure? Why not decree such fashions
in outside dress as shall enable any woman
to make new one entire within few hours
from the time she buys the material and the
pattern, or to have it done within that time
by some one else? In either case, the saving
would be immense in every way. The same
rule could be adopted for all inner garments;
and that division of the wardrobe which
comes under the head of Lingerie" mean
that all of them could be divested of most of
their superfous ruffles and trimmings, and
at the same time gain immensely in strictly
artistic beauty. 1t was with the immensity
of the ruffies on wash goods that
those terrible 'laundress bills'' came in.
Had it not been for the sewing machine
q
toria lawn to the waist, she would not have
to pay five or ten dollars to get it properly
done up. After all, it is the falsest of econ
omy. as it is the worst of taste, to hide gar
ment in forest of ruffiing, because it is so
easy to put it on with the sewing machine, "a in
sooth. "But," says somebody, you'll take the
bread out of the mouths OF hundreds and
thousands of sewing machine operators and
laundresses if you do anything like this.
Indeed2 thought women wanted TO go
up higher in the professions, and not be
hewers of wood and drawers OF water for
ever! 1t is argued that there are many
healthier and more remunerative occupations
now mostly monopolized by men, just as
suitable to them as the above named ones.
If women have to be driven into them, it is
their own fault, and we are certainly not
bound to keep up wrong state of things by
which a whole community suffers, for the
sake of any particular class or guild in it.
If sewing-machines are ever to fulfil their
legitimate aim of labor-saving inventions,
there must be less call for sewing women and
special laundresses.
Ho,,orJ nI.. adam S, Nom VorL. T:,aoa