The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-06-02

Do not take the fashion of children's clothes for granted. Do not fall into the error of going on the old methods. There is as much ebb and flow in the tide of juvenile costumery as in adult, so watch straws and then so with the current
 Patterns cannot be handed down from one child's wardrobe to another. What was worn last season is usually out of the picture by the time the new season begins.
 Things were not always according to this schedule of variation. For centuries children were dressed alike. Glimpse backward over the portraits that hang in our museums to prove this The tor tuous clothes that were put on infants three centuries ago will most probably make the modern woman, filled to the eyes as she is with the schedules of hygiene and sanitation, want to scream aloud at the misery that was inflicted.
 Even the wooden sabots and long, full skirts of the small Dutch girl, with her white rabbit, stirs in the mother of the moment violent feeling of reform. We grieve far more, you know, for the dis comfort of the young than for the actual grief of the old.
 As near to nudity as the law allows has been the modern interpretation of children's clothes, and we have felt that by hardening their legs and arms through constant exposure in the formative years, we are handing them a talisman against weakness and disease in the settled sea sons of life.
 If a child bares her legs to all the cold now, she will not suffer when she T. the comment of the first group of moth CTS who started the fashion of no stock ings on the young when this century opened. And the scientists of human life tell us that child mortality decreases each year. Has the exposure trick suc- ceeded, one wonders?
 Surely clothes play an important role in the drama of a child's life. Outdoor sleeping, correct pastures at study, the removal of adenoids. supervised play hours, the scientific development of will-power and self-control, are not great 1y superior to the accepted processes Of juvenile dressing.
 The elimination of the garter that binds, the corset that restricts, the skirt that hampers, the sleeves that cover, the shoe that pinches, has aided the doctor and the teacher.
 PRESENT DANGER
 True, there was strong opposition to this method of dressing in the first years of it's upward struggle to success. Elan nel skirts and over-warm r@erclothing had been the symbols of protective work. Starch was a part of cleanliness and add ed to the comeliness of the young. But usage by the majority always wears thin the opposition of the minority, and bare knees were no more unusual here than in the Highlands when this decade started.
 It would have been absurb to com pei from youngsters a measure of dis comfort that the adult had contempt ously discarded. The calendar had come to be regarded as a parer that marked off the progress of days, but not the procession of the seasons. One did not put on thick clothes because it was win ter. nor omit peltry because 1t was summer. Why ask children to endure what age could not tolerate?
 Even during the orgy of near-nudity that prevailed in juvenile clothes, how l ever, there was variation in fashion and 1.-the constant pressure of individual and 'capricious opinion. Nothing was per fntted to remain in solid state. Fash ions were fluid, flowing this way and then that
 The chance of successful caprice was so great and good that designers of rare merit and interna tional fame essayed the building of juvenile clothes and found the field productive of actual wealth. And it is to these designers that we owe the present danger.
 This danger is that common-sense and acquired wisdom achieved with great ef- fort through the last two decades, after centuries of wrong-doing, may be slipping through our grasp. The clothing of tini- est dimensions and absence of all orna- mentation was too easy to turn out in the sewing room, and therefore there was too slight demand for the work of those who were filled with genius. When the