The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1880-08-27

less as women. Your worst tyrants
are those CT your own sex.
Only few days ago we heard Mrs.
Liverm0re lecture on "Superfluous
Women" She told us all about the
beautiful things she saw at the Centen-
NAL, all made by women. We enjoyed
her lecture, applauded and Endorsed it,
but we felt sad when she told about the
beautiful things she saw at the Centen-
NAL that women made. Here, to our
way of thinking is the most imperfect
phase of woman education. We dom {
know what she can make, but we do
know what she can't make. She can't
make her own clothes.
Now, how can women expect to go
out into the great world and compete
with her brother until she can make
her own clothes as well as her brother
makes his? Don't tell us you can, be-
cause we know better. You can't.
See here. Three years ago-it may
have been four, but it was certainly
three-we went into a merchant-tailor-
ing establishment in Burlington to order
a of clothes. We selected the cloth,
the cutter measured us, the proprietor
said, ''We will send the suit to the
house when it is finished" That was
all. We never bothered about it, didn't
go to see how the suit was coming
along, it came home. was put on, it fit.
as a matter of course, just as we ex-
pected it would, and there was nothing
lacking about it. Since that time we
have never troubled the cutter for a
When we want new suit we merely
select the cloth and go out, and in due
time the suit follows us home. If we
are thousand miles from home we
have just to write and the suit is made,
sent by express and fits just as well as
though we run in to fuss over it six
times minute.
Now, on the other hand, our wife
wants dress. After two or three or
half dozen stores have been ransacked
for the goods, the dressmaker is sought
out. The matter of measurement is
tedious, and then the matter of fitting
is one of numerous and repeated trials.
Finally the dress is finished and sent
home. Then it is sent back to be taken
in here and let out there, and at last,
after the customer has been. fitted more
times for that one dress than her hus-
band has been measured in three or
four years, the dress comes home for
the last time, and is pronounced by the
wearer, her friends and the dress
maker as beautiful and perfect fit. and
it is finished.
Beautiful it certainly is, far more
beautiful than anything her husband
ever wears. Colors and material. style,
shades and contrasting bits of
color, are all in the perfection of good
taste. No man can improve upon that.
But it isn't finished. When it is com
pleted as far as the skill of the dress
maker can finish it, and it is to be put
on, it has to be pinned somewhere;
in two or three, often in half
a dozen places. It always requires
pin. Leave out the pin and the dress
is all awry somewhere. On all this
broad American continent there is not
one woman who can dress so as to
make any kind of an appearance in good
society without pins.
Now, suppose our tailor should send
our suit home, and when we had put on
the coat we had to pin it at the neck?
Or suppose there were no susrender
buttons aft, and we had to use pins
there? Suppose he made our shirts so
that we would have to pin on the collar.
how long would such a shirt or suit of
clothes stay in the house? Who would
be responsible for the language used by
the man who had to pin on his coat?
No tailor would dare to tempt the
wrath of independent man. But wom-
she patiently pins on the
dress that she paid some one thirty or
forty dollars to make, and doesn't
think anything about it. We will not
pursue this painful subject. Let the
women of America take it up and think
about it, and learn, in the noble inde-
pendence of womanhood, to make their
clothes before they put them on.-Bob
Bardette, tn Burlington Ha,okeye.
Old and New Ways Of Locking the
Federal Strong Boxes.