Year: 1873

WE know of few things about which
there is so much nonsense talked and
written as about corsets. 1t is the fash
ion Just now to denounce them as inge-
nious devices of the enemy, and good
deal of cheap popularity has been secured
in this way. In this, as in most other
matters pertaining to the dress reform
movement, facts have weighed little while
all sorts of foolish assumptions have been
treated as axioms.


Now we know perfectly well that some
women lace themselves too tight, although
it is not at present fashionable to do so.
We know, too, that many women have Sc
riously injured their health while some
have sacrificed life itself ON the shrine of
a slender waist But the wearing of the
corset does not necessarily, and, in fact,
does not commonly end in tight-lacing;
while lacing, and that, too, of very
hurtful sort, may be and frequently is ac-
cemplshed without the use of a corset at
all. We have seen mems clothes worn as
tightly as any corset ever was. The con-
demnation of tight lacing is perfectly
just, of course, as everybody having the
smallest knowledge of anatomy knows.
| But many women who never lace wear
corsets and derive great benefit from
their use. 1t is certainly very absurd to
| demand that these people shall forego a
comfort giving article of apparel merely
| because they could turn it into an instru
ment of torture if they were fools. They
| find that to put the entire weight of their
clothing upon their shoulders is to give
themselves pain, and in order to divide it
they let part of their apparel depend upon
the hips for support. To do this without
a corset it would be necessary to wear
the garments altogether tighter about the
waist than they should be worn, and to
bind them around a single mar
row zone, which would be both un-
comfortable and unwise. The cor
set, however, distributes both the
weight and the pressure over the strong
muscles of the hips, and as ii is less yield
! ing than the flesh it Obviates the necessity
of tight Wristbands altogether. The cor
set properly used, in other words, furnish
es the very best remedy for tightlacing,
particularly now that taper waists have
! gone out of fashion.


We are told that corsets ruin the health
that they make people nervous, irresolute,
and weaklings generally; that our race is
growing feebler every day since we have
no more mothers of the old Roman type
But stop moment. History tells us that
the fine old Roman mothers themselves
wore corsets! Coming on down we find
that our sturdy Saxon forefatheTs wore q
very close fitting sort of corset, extending
from the arm. pits to the waist, made al
first of stout linen and Afterwards of heavy
leather. Worse and worse, the Crusaders
and other knights of the middle age, who
whatever other faults were laid to theil
charge, have never been accused of weak
ness, nervousness, or irresolution, wore a
corset, or, as they called it, cuirass
made of two plates of metal, the one fit
ting the back and the other the chest, the
two being buckled together at the sides
and forming about as stiff and unyieldinG
a corset as can well be imagined. The
Germans, too, are commonly accounted d
sturdy race, and even when living in OuI
land of shaky nerves their women are
deemed model mothers in all physical re
CARDS. And yet ii was they who first gave
the idea of the modern corset to the
French, and through the French to the
world. They wore clumsy contrivanct
of heav and rude workmanship. The
French made 1t lighter after the revolu
ton, and gave it something more of shape
illness, and the corset of to-day stood con
fessed.


Now let us not be misunderstood, We
condemn as heartily as anybody the prac
tice of COMPRISING waists, but we do no
believe either that the use of the corse
necessarily fosters that practice or tina
the abandonment of corsets will cure the
evil. We do believe that the corset prop