Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1917-02-21
At Last Good Reform IN Girls
Dress Has Come Says Dorothy Dla

they must do so within reason during
business hours. We do not attempt
to dictate to them, but we object to
their coming to the office in ballet
skirts, their chests barred, and their
hair dressed as if for a social func-
ton. We wish our young women to
be business women while in the office,
and we think enough Of them to de
plore that they should attract adverse
criticism in the street"
The insurance company's example
has been followed by the Bell Tele-
phone company, OF Philadelphia,
which announces that the company
disapporves OF its girl employees wear
ing knee-length skirts, and that any
girl coming to work dressed like a
chorus girl. and with her face painted,
will be sent home to change her
clothes and wash her face.
Several business houses in New
York have joined individually in the
movement, and during the last week !
heard of two girls who were requested
by the heads of the departments in
which they worked to wear thicker
waists.
Women are always very sensitive
/ to masculine criticism OF the way they
dress and get very indignant at the
! idea of mere man debating to them
about what they shall wear, but the
men are in the right in this instance,
and it is to be hoped that the girls
will have enough sense to see 1t and
revise their wardrobe accordingly.
One of the reasons that women
have had such hard time in trying
to get equal pay for equal work is be-
cause they have not been taken seri-
ously in business, and the chief rea-
son why they haven't been taken seri-
ously in business is because of their
foolish clothes. They have gone to
work attired as if for an afternoon
tea, and employers have looked upon
them in the light of piffling, Cabling,
gadding society girls, with no ideas
beyond a macaroon and the latest
thing in hats
Our clothes brand US. They are
the tag on us that gives our number.
If you wanted to go into big deal
you'd never pick out for partner a
man who came down to work in the
morning in his evening clothes. If
you wanted a shrewd lawyer you
wouldn't choose one who dressed in
yachting flannels in office hours. You
wouldn't put your money in bank
whose president was decked out in
college sport clothes. All of these
men might be ever so competent in
their lines, but they wouldn't inspire
} confidence because of the way they
were dressed. They wouldn't look
their parts.
And it's exactly the same way with
the girl in business. When she's rig
, ged up in flimsy chiffons, with high
. heeled dancing slippers on, and with
beads rafting, and bracelets clinking,
. she doesn't look like an intelligent hu-
man being who would understand her
: job or be capable of making any sort
of binding contract.
!, Moreover she doesn't show good
taste or good judgment or good finan-
: cial sense by her choice of inapproprl-
ate finery, and that is another black
mark against her An employer in.
stinctively fears to trust a woman &c
make a trade for him who has in
vested her own money so idlotically
To do things you must look as il
you can do them. You must be able
to make other people believe that yot
can do them, and you must be dressed
as if you were in the habit OF doins
t. them, and this is something womer
have yet to learn.
!, Girls desire to make themselves
|. beautiful is such an overwhelming
passion that they would probably
never be able to conquer it of them
selves. Therefore it is good new:
that business men are going to hell
them by instituting rational dress
reform and by doing it in the SAINT
simple way by which they stopped
their young men employees iron
0 drinking. In both cases, when it be
n comes a choice of drink, or dress, o.
!, job, the job wins.