Los Angeles herald., 1891-12-19
Friday Morning Club Women
Without Them.
Dress Reform Enthusiastically
Endorsed.
Tight Shoes, Heavy Skirts, Corsets
and Big Hats Condemned.
The Meeting of the Club Yesterday.
The Papers Read-some Typical
Facts and Fancies Lee
tured Upon.

At the Friday Morning club meeting,
yesterday, interesting papers were re ad
from Mrs. Judson, Mrs. Enderlein, Mrs.
Wing and DR.. Lummis, which were
followed by an animated discussion on
the long dress, cosmetics, tight shoes,
etc.
The guests of the club were Miss
Maude B. Foster, Pittsburg; Mrs. Nc.
Connell, Phoenix; Frau Olgo Steige,
Dresden; Miss Edith Beach, The Palms
Mrs. f. G. Gehrich, M. d., Alameda
Miss Kate Stephens, San Gabriel.
The motto for the morning was: We
have reformed that indifferently with
us. o. Reform it altogether.-Hamlet
THE SHOE.
Mrs. Judson opened the morning g
programme with crisp, bright, origi-
nal paper upon the foundation OF dress
The Shoe:
We talk of women being ''the weaker
sex ;" when we consider the suffering
she has endured, at the altar of the god
of fashion, we wonder that she has not
become extinct. When the subject of
shoes was given me-in my
Innocent and unsuspicious mind it did
not occur to me that there was anything
but mere accident in the selection.
Later, in retrospective and reflective
mood, while drawing on pair of very
large, very wide, and in many ways very
sensible walking shoes, it occurred to
me that some one had caught glimpse
of these same shoes, and had intuitively
reached the conclusion that | was fitted
to make this appeal in behalf of reform
in shoes, solely from that point of view
which was view Of my sole.
No one can speak more strongly on
formed drunkard. For the good of the
cause, l will make the confession am
reformed wearer of tight shoes-shoes
as tight as was possible by any means to
get into.
For years life was a burden. Of
course some folks. to whom 1 was total
ly Indifferent, admired my foot. These
shoes were four sizes smaller than /
wear today. Those years OF unnecessa-
nv suffering in q mistaken cause can
never come back to me.
In establishing a standard of beauty
for any article Of dress, let US not forget
that fitness is one OF the great essen
tials. A shoe that does not give it's
wearer freedom of movement, that
makes lines of care in the face, cannot
be beautiful shoe in the highest sense
of tae word. Anything that is gained
in the abstract beauty, at the expense of
the harmony of the whole, is not to be
desired. Few people walk well; few
people wear shoe with low heels, thick
soes, or in any way fitted to the foot it
adorns.
The common-sense shoe really leaves
little to be desired in the way OF COM
fort and utility, and beauty too, if our
tastes are not vitiated by false stand
ards.
Even in China they are beginning to
think on this question, as a paragraph
read from the Woman's Journal showed.
Let US keep our standards high. What
we want is more breadth of sole, and
better understanding, from the shoe
makers standpoint.
UNDERCLoTHES AND CoRSETs.
The next subject was Underclothes,
presented by Mrs. Enderlein: The
genuine reform undergarments OF today
are few in number and simple in de-
sign. They may be varied in material,
and perhaps in the putting together,
but they must agree in principle with
the following rules:
/. The vital organs in the central
regions of the body must have unim-
peded action in other words, no cor
sets.
2. A uniform temperature of the body
should be observed; this demands union
suits, from neck to ankles, of silk, wool,
or gauze, according to season and taste.
3. The weight must be reduced to
minimum. This does away with heavy
skirts. bustles, dress protectors and
trains.
4. The shoulders, not the hips, must
be the base of support. This removes
all bands and ligatures.
Volumes have been written on the
evils of corsets, but women still cling 20
them and declare that without them
they would collapse into an uncertain
shape, with neither contour nor comeli-
ness. Mrs. Woolsen says: "How for
tunate for our sex that some man, see-
ing this great deficiency in Natures
work, supplemented it with garment
that keeps one-half of humanity from
being hopeless failure. God seems to
have been able to construct man, but
he made woman chaos, a shapeless
form and void, until art invented the
garment to prop her up and hold her
down, and give her sufficient support to
maintain herself erect, and discharge
the daily duties of life."
The use of corsets dates back to re-
mote ages. The figures of Egyptian
women, in the time of Rameses the
great, show an artificial shape of the
waist. In England and France corsets
were worn as early as the twelfth CEN
tury. In the sixteenth century corsets
were worn at night as we'll as day. Even
men wore them then, and history has
illusions to corsets worn by men as lar
back as the thirteenth century.
The Greeks believed personal beauty
paramount to everything. In the days
of Pantheistic worship the body was the
first consideration, the soul subordinate.
The garb of men and women differed
slightly. They did not dress, they en-
veloped themselves in clinging drapery.
Chaste outlines, not the voluptuous cos