Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1893-03-09
Crinoline and Cholera.

The following article on Crinoline and
Cholera places womens' dependent posi-
ton in very ridiculous light. If
writers everywhere would only expend
IS much energy in ridiculing some of
the more dangerous fashions of men
some reform might be secured.
The brutal injustice of keeping woman
in her present political condition was
never brought out so permanently as by
the present agitation as regards crino-
line. 1t makes the strongest pies, we
venture to say, which was ever put for
ward for woman suffrage since the
movement began. Nothing before has
ever so shown the utter helplessness of
woman's position. Mark the present
situation. Here are two twin scourges
threatening our shores-cholera and
crinoline. Cholera attacks men as we'll
as women, and what do we find? Strict
quarantine and rigid sanitary precau.
tons either already in force or about to
be applied. Crinoline finds its victims
only among won en-, and not move,
not shadow of move, is seen either
for keeping it out or staying its ravages
after 1t has reached US and become cpl
denlic. If women had the voice in the
affairs of state which suffrage would
give her the National Crinoline Quaran-
tine Service would have been estab ished
three months ago.
1t seems scarcely necessary to say
that women do not want crinoiine, and
are frig htened ana distressed at its ap-
proach. The newspapers are full of
letters from them protesting against its
introduction. The fashion papers, which
are conducted by women. are filled with
burning denunciation of crinoline and
pathetic confessions that the women of
the country are already in its grasp.
Earnest outcries by women against the
article may also be heard on the street,
in the elevated cars, in the stores-in
fact, wherever two or three women are
gathered together there will the man
who is base enough to listen hear e1ino-
| line objected to in trembling tones,
always ending with the hopeless remark
| that nothing can be DONE They stand
like Andromeds, chained 10 the rock,
with the great French monster Crinoline
coming up out of the eea to devour
them, and with no hope Of a Perseus.
| Of course the occasion has not been
lost by many ill-natured men tlippantly
to inquire why. if woman doesn't ike
crinoline, she is going to wear it? They
have attempted to be funny by saving
that there is no law compelling her to
wear it, and some we blush to say, have
even gone so far as to assert that if she
is as strongminded as she always says
she is st suffrage convention she
would no more let the subject of crime.
line worry her than she would the prob
able fashions in the planet Neptune.
All of this sort of talk is born either Of
malice or of ignorance. It is true that
there is no law on the statute books re-
curing women to wear crinoline, but
there is higher law than the statute
books-if we may paraphrsse q cele-
brated remark. There is no Srate or
National law, or even mum. lp. o7li-
nance. so far as we can find, compelling
birds of passage to fly away to the
4 south st the approaeh OF winter; still
they GO, iinpelled bv law they cannot
resist. So with the wearing of emo
line. There comes vague hint that it
must be worn-the crinoline feeling is
in the air, the crinoline itself is in the
drygoods stores. Woman hates it.
loathes the sight Of it; still she can no
more help putting it on than she can
help noticing that another woman has
powder on her nose. Right here is