, 1891-11-29
womAN,s WORLD IN PARAGRAPHS

The Cry for Dress Reform Grows in
Strength and Volume.
Business and professional women are
gradually making up their minds that
we must have dress reform if the move
ment for the emancipation of women is
to go on. How it is to come about no.
body just knows, but come it must.
Women who are obliged to go to office
cannot continue to wade through mud
and slush and ruin their clothing by be-
dragging it through filth and mire.
They cannot use their brains all day,
think their best thoughts and keep their
health if they sit bolt upright all day in
cased in stiff corsets. This much is
plain-the blood cannot thus circulate
properly through their brains. 1t is
melancholy to see women try to walk
wearing b present fashion of gown.
There is a long swaddling of garments,
like the wrappings of a mummy, with
just a feeble wriggle at the top and bot
tom of the thing. There is no more
''give" or willowy, gliding movement to
the waist of the ordinary corseted girl
h there is to the body of a wooden
tobacco sign. The moment girls and
women are educated to see that this
woodeny, crippled body is not beautiful
or artistic, then and not till Their
will they let their bodies have nat
ural play. Most women will tell you
they need corsets to hold them up. Ma
ture furnished them with a very strong
set of muscles around the front of the
waist and stomach for them TO hold them
selves up with. They AVE weakened
these splendid muscles by corset wear
ing, but any woman who has grit enough
can yet overcome this weakness and
learn to hold herself erect without being
boarded up. AS to the awful, dragging
dress skirts, the suggestion of Frances
Willard is a good one, that every woman
shall shorten the length of her walking
dress to the ankles. She can wear such
a gown without attracting unpleasant
attention, particularly if she is neat and
careful about her feet. A foot need not
even be small if it is well shaped and
neatly shod. The women who write
about fashions cannot help much, for
they are expected to write to please the
carriage women. The reform must be-
gin with the brave, strong ladies whose
privilege it is to earn their own living,
and whose lot it is to go outdoors in all
weathers.
At Ashland, Pa, is a coal mine with a
woman superintendent, Mrs. Frances
Woodbridge.
Rev. Mr.. Isham, pastor of Grace
Methodist church in Lincoln, Neb., says
that the present activity among the
feminine sex means the removal of the
grave clothes which have bound woman
hand n foot through the centuries"
The men who do not want women to
work in what they call mems occupa-
tons" ought to take the contract of sup
porting all the women without work.
Women would probably submit to it.
Women are the pillars of the Meth
odist church. 1t was a woman who
started the movement that founded the
church, yet in the ecumenical council Of
M%ethodists from all over the world, in
which the woman question was dis
cussed, not a woman delegate vas pres
ant and not a woman was asked to
speak. 1 wonder how much longer
women in the churches will stand this
sort of thing?
Margaret Knight invented the machine
for the making of the paper bags with
REINFORCED bottom, now in such common
use.
New York has two skillful and sue
cessful girl jewellers, Emma and Minnie
SchultZe, who work in their fathers es-
adjustment.
ELIZA ARCHARD CONNER