San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1891-08-14
DRESS REFORM.
Miss willard and the Temperate
Union Join the Chautauquans

Miss willard and the Temperate
Union Join the Chautauquans
A great dress reform movement is
to be inaugurated in the United States
1t will be concise and comprehensive
and embrace all the schools from the
most conservative to the m~ostradical.
The crusade against the prevailing
fashions which was begun at Chau-
tauqua about a week ago, was the first
intlmation OF what was coming, but
to-day the secret leaked out, and IL
shows that the women reformers are
on the war-path and really mean
business. The great trouble up to
the present time with the ladies has
been to get q leader, a sort OF Martin
Luther, rs il were, who could preci-
pitate a great reformation in the fasn-
ion world with some degree OF energy
enthusiasm and enterprise. This lea
der has just been found in the person
OF Mis-. Frank Stuart Parker; of Chi
cago, who so bravely nailed her dress
reform thesis against the gates of
Chautauqua about a week ago, and
has since that time been receiving
delegations of women from all over
the country in her suite of rooms here
and defended her position and propo
sitions in a way nat has attracted
the widest attention all over the
"orntrv The women interested
have just selected as q central com
nI..te Gne following prominent women;
Mrs. Frank Stuart Parker, Chicago,
Ill. MRS. Frances E. Russell, st. Paul
Mlnn. Annie Jennes Miller, New
Vo.E El;n, bach At,art Dkal~a yI1arl
Anna c Bracket, DR.. Mary Putnam
jacob, Miss Parker, the Chicago
champion and culture propagandist
OF the new order of things, is one Of
the most charming of persons and is
the wife of Col. Francis Parker, the
principal of the Chautauqua Teachers
Retreat aud President Of the Cook
County Normal School in Chicago.
Chautauqua now has four styles of
dress in fnll swing. namely the sew
skirt, the old skirt the divided skirt
and the apology for skirts (or trouser.
tees the last named being worn by
the gymnasium girls. The radical
reformer goin tor . slightmodification
of actress tights while others or less
extreme, prefering: some improve
ment on the divided skirt, which
they say is toe roomy, while the
tights are not roomy enough. The
new crusade is very sweeping, and
will cut a broad swath in the domain
of dress now solely inhabited by man
and the curious thing about it all is
that Miss Frances Willard has
wheeled the whole National Tempe
Union into line in support OF
the movement. In her very bright
address here Saturday entitled A
White Life for Two, she made some
very striking and suggestive remarks
When We heard what Mrs; Parker
has been saying to the Chautauqua
ladies about dress reform we gave
three cheers for her, said the great
temperance apostle, and than she
followed this up by some startling
statements. The peath line, said she
drawing in the air with her finger
the outline of q woman's- waist
squeezed into the shape of q sand
hour glass has filed more cranes
than whiskey. Miss Willard than
added that she did not believe that
any woman with the constrained
waist the fiaring hat and the high
heeled shoes will be allowed by the
heavenly power to invent anything.
The reformers will endeavor by pho
tograph statues and lectures from
prominent artists to change the pre-
sentideal of proportion in the human
figure