The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-07
NEWS AND GOSSIP OF
 INTEREST TO SOCIETY
Dinner Dansant at Newspaper Club Last Party With Miss Gray Honoree-Club Dances and Lunch
 eons-Club Meetings Society Personals

The following item, "Ethics of Dress U from the Dixie Home Magazine, will be found interesting as well amusing:
 With both the press and the pulpit making dress and dress reform the lead ing question of the hour, it really has be- come matter not only of national but international importance, as we'll and yet what of it? True while the press con tinues to spread the news and the pull pit to spread the gospel the petticoat has ceased to spread considerable, in fact has ceased altogether, but what matters it. why all this resentment?
 Twenty odd years ago when women began to wear tailored coat suits and plain shirtwaists, up came a mighty howl of protest and host of prophetic warn ings, as to how women would soon be assuming male in full. And skirts were five yards wide at that time.
 At the present date. with skirts scarcely a yard all around, the most exquisitely feminine waists of dainty laces and nets are being worn, but still the same wall of protest arises coupled with the prediction of trousers being as sumed at an early date.
 "Queer, isn't it, the jealous care with which men guard the wearing of trous- CTS? Seems as though tiky deem it their only badge of manhood, and yet the only women who wear. or seem to care to wear this main attribute of masculine dress are those who live in the closest bond age, the enslaved women of the far east, whose every thought act is dominated by a master.
 Dress always has been and always will be the question of greatest impor- tance to women, but men are worrying themselves with a usless burden when they undertake to answer it. Long be- fore the press or the pulpit has decided what is moral and what is immoral in dress, their arguments will have been sidetracked by a change in styles, and all their carefully prepared evidence tra- duced to useless scribnle.
 As a matter of course, at all seasons, and with every style, some women will bedeck or un-bedeck themselves in such a manner as to call forth deserved cen sure, but that is the woman herself, not the style; her love of extremes and de- sire to attract attention, so why con demn the entire more of dress. We doubt not that even in the days of hoop-s&irts there were many belonging to an earlier generation who found much to complain of, and many to criticise Nevertheless the hoopskirts flourished and were worn until-they went out of style
 That's it-that's the real key 10 the situaton-the solution of the problem to be in, out, of style, Right now, with the style of dress changing every week, to be correctly dressed is about the hardest thing a woman try to do. A dress made today is out of date tomorrow, and that is what worries it's wearers.
 Men may keep the trousers, and wear them as long or as short as they wish, no one else wants them, but women are going to follow the dictates of style, re- gardless of editorials or sermons, and whether skirts flare at the top or at the bottom is no great moral issue, it is only a question of moment, and which neither the press nor the pulpit has any influence in deciding'