The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-09-13
MOSES AND BLOOMERS,
Rabbi Voorsanger Denies That
Scripture Meant Those
Things.
AN ANTI-BL0oMER PREACHER.
A Learned Rabbi Says the Immod-
esty of Boomers Is In Those Who
Talk About Them.

MANY feminine minds are still severely
exercised as to whether women ought to
wear boomers. Whole armies of the fair
sex have not hesitated to avail themselves
of the greater freedom of limb that the
bifurcated garment offers, but there are
numerous others who hang back and look
askance at the insidious bloomer.
In this unsettled condition of things,
when the fate of the bloomer is hanging in
the balance, man has rushed into the
breach, breathing death and destruction
to the bifurcated garment.
He is Rev. G. E. Scott, pastor of the M.
E. Church, which gives his words weight
of authority they might not otherwise
possess. The reverend gentleman, in re-
cent sermon preached at Waterloo, Iowa.
hurled the Mosaic law at the bloomer, his
text being: 1.-THE woman shall not wear
that which pertaineth unto man ali such
are an abomination unto the Lord"
He said this law was given them because
God, looking down through ages, saw the
new woman "dressed in mems clothes, with
abbreviated trousers, scant cloth, and tied
with a string; to the infinite disgust or
| men," He asserted there was not a woman
who wore boomers who did not grow less
modest every time she put them on. lie
said he was not different from other men,
and when he saw a woman paradlng the
streets dressed as man his respect Tor her
was gone.
Rev. DR.. Voorsanger was asked yesterday
whether it was probable that the ancient
command that woman shall not wear that
which pertaineth unto man. could reason
ably be made to apply to boomers.
The rabbi replied that he had yet to
learn that boomers had ever been consid-
cred a male garment 1.-THE man can
know nothing about history" he added.
'In the time of Moses men and women
| alike wore flowing garments, in fact one
may say that Moses himself wore skirt.
The modern style of male dress was en-
tirely unevolved. Nothing so inartistic had
been dreamed of. The most graceful style
of dress seen to-day is in the Orient, and
among the Turks and the Arabs men and
women alike wear trousers, but no one &C
cuses the Turkish women OF immodesty on
that account"
Having shown that there was no Just
scriptural cause or impeachment why women
should not wear boomers the doctor added
that in his own estimation there was really
no reason why they should not be adopted.
mo one can call the garment immodest,
though as to the ngainliness-well that
is a matter of opinion"
81 do not suppose that the Bible had any
| conception of the bloomer costume" said
Rev. DR.. Nieto, commenting on Rev. G. E.
| SCOTS scathing denunciation of the bifur-
Gated garment. "The quotation he makes
is evidently not theological law. 1t was
aimed against women parading in cos
tune not that of their own sex. There is
law to the same effect all over the civil
lied world to-day which forbids men to
appear in women's dress or vice versa.
| The bloomer is distinctively feminine
| dress-no one could mistake it for mans
costume.
IF God, looking down through the ages,
saw and disapproved of boomers surely he
would have done something to. prevent
their coming into existence. / think the
immodesty of the garment exists more in
the minds or those who denounce it than
in the actual wearers. The whole thing
seems to me to be more a question of grace
than of immodesty. No one could accuse
the women one sees wearing bloomers of
trying to be immodest, but it will always
be a question of taste whether they look
artistic.
'You see, from an artists standpoint
woman's figure can only be graceful in one
of two ways-when it is draped and when
it is not-and boomers have none of the
beauty of artistic drapery. I would with
draw my latent objection to boomers if I
were assured that the ladies were con-
WINGED that the costume was more COM
Portable and gave them more free use of
the limbs"