Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-09

sumer who spends precious time and
strength puzzling over what she snail
do with last years sleeves, or gives
them away and gets wholly new pair,
whose sole recommendation is they are
large where the others were small and
small where the others were large.
"The constantly recurring and yet
unforseeable change means loss to the
manufacturing group in that they must
be ever ready to readjust machinery,
abandon patterns and possibly employ
new kinds of skill. For them of all
things, stability is the most desirable,
and here instability is the key to the
while situation. For the laborer it
often means destitution.
"In Miss Collett's report on women's
work in Booths Life and Labor of the
People of London there are references
to the misery among the fringemakers
because fringe had gone out, among the
feather dressers because ribbons had
replaced feathers-Malthus' reports on
the misery among whole community
when silver buckles on shoes we've re-
placed by ribbon bows.
Seemingly petty changes in fashion
will often produce wide-reaching effects
in production Mr.. Nautilus states that
the substitution of shoe ribbons for
buckles was severe blow, long felt by
Sneulel0 ana birmingham.
"'On a smaller scale and with less
notoriety,' says writer in the
Athenaeum, the dismal tragedy of the
cotton famine is enacted every year in
one or another of our great cities.
Every time faahion selects new ma
I terial for eSs, or new invention
supersedes old contrivances, workmen
| are thrown out of employment
Professor Rogers gives the following
piquant Illustration of the effect of
changes in the mere fashion of dress:
"A year or two ago every woman who
made any pretension of dress, according
to the custom of the day, surrounded
herself with a congerie of parallel
steel hoops.
Tons of Wire for Hoops
1T is said that fifty tons of crinoline
wire were turned out weekly from the
factories, chiefly in Yorkshire. The
fashion had passed away and the de-.
mand for the material and the labor
has ceased. Thousands of persons once
engaged in this production are now re-
duced to enforced idleness or con-
strained to oetake themselves to some
other occupation. Again, a few years
ago, women dressed themselves plenti-
fully with ribbons. This fashion has
also changed; where a hundred yards
were sold one Is hardly purchased now,
and the looms of multitude of silk
operatives are idle.
""To quote another instance: At the
present time women are pleased to
walk about bareheaded. The straw
plaiters Of Bedfordshire, Bucks, Hert-
fordshire and Essex are reduced sud
denly from a condition of tolerable
prosperity to one of great poverty and
Distress Quoted from Walker on
Wages. (Pol. Economy, 1869, pp)
"'Of course, the work passes from
one group to another and the new de-
mand is Of advantage for a time to
the group to which it comes. But it is
vastly the exploitation. of any results
in a lessening of the energies of the
whole
Reasons for Hope for Future
"There is in the growing possibility
of using governmental machinery by
the entire community for the benefit of
the entire community, reasons for hope
that conditions may be established
which will not be notably bad and that
on the basis of those conditions in
crease in intelligence may bring about
within large groups and perhaps over
considerable areas conditions which
may be fairly satisfactory. In order,
however, to use this machinery for the
benefit of the whole community resort
must be had to what might be called
compulsory standardization.
"Those conditions must be formulated
which in the light of the present intel
ligence Of the community can be agreed
upon as bad as will be allowed to con-
tinue Resort must be had to the use
of the compulsory power resting in the
government.
"There are advantages, however, to-
those who would multiply sales-the de-
partment stores, the purVeyors, and
they are the ones who Until the con-
sumner assumes control, are masters Of
the situation. They are the ones
through whom those who would spend
to show their spending powers are graf
flied; and others who know not how are
led to spend after very much their
fashion-only ordinarily more helpless
ly, more passively than the truly con-
spicuous waster."