hang a variety of gowns. "Let us only so clothe ourselves," wrote Dinah Mulock Craik, "that this frail body of ours while it does last may not be unpleasing in the sight of those who love us; and let us so use it in this life that in the life to come it may be found worthy to be clothed upon' with its Maker's own glorious immortality."

OCTAVIA WILLIAMS BATES OF MICHIGAN THUS CONCLUDED THE DISCUSSION:

From observation and thinking about women and their work in the world, and from a thorough study of the literature of the "Reform Dress Movement," it has been my conviction for years that there is nothing which more closely and intimately concerns the well-being of women, and through them the welfare of the race, than their dressnot only in its physical effects upon the woman herself, but in its ulterior and more enduring effects upon the mental and moral status of mankind. If the dress of women has such important influences upon themselves and upon the men with whom they are associated, if this influence extends to the born and to the unborn, as it certainly does, then the question of dress becomes ethical and vital, and it assumes the importance of a subject worthy of our highest thought and our most serious consideration. True Christianity gives encouragement and impetus to this idea, for it teaches that the body is a beautiful temple, to be guarded as a sacred trust and a most precious possession; that it is a noble instrument upon which mind and spirit play; a servant, whose rewards are many and great for kind and intelligent treatment, but whose revenge is terrible for ignorance and willful abuse.

Hence, anything that interferes with the natural and harmonious working of the body is wrong from an ethical or moral point of view. Consequently, as a natural result of this teaching, the wearing of any garment that impedes the

circulation of the blood or hinders the free play of the muscles must be considered wrong.

The wearing of any ligature that keeps the lungs from their full action in aerating the blood is wrong; the wearing of any style of dress that keeps the woman who wears the dress from doing her full share of the work of the world is wrong. These things are all wrong, in that they lessen the health and vigor of the individual, make her a weaker member of society, and lessen her efficiency and usefulness in any line of work.

"The judgments of science pronounced against dress from a hygienic standpoint are judgments against it from a moral standpoint," says Mrs. Ecob, and all right-minded persons must coincide with her opinion. It is worthy of note that the present style of dress for women confines their activities within very narrow limits, and really closes many avenues of honorable and lucrative employment that might be open to them if they wore a different style of dress. Girls in factories are not allowed to tend certain machines because of the flowing garments that they wear. Managers of manufactories say that there are many machines that women could run as well as men were it not for the danger of their clothing becoming entangled in the belting of the machinery. It is not a question here of brains or of strength at all, but simply one of dress. There are undoubtedly thousands and thousands of women out of employment to-day in the United States, who, if they were clothed suitably for such work, might find agreeable and remunerative labor in shops and manufactories.

The ethics of any question is always closely allied to the esthetics of the same subject. Nothing can be esthetic that is opposed to ethical principles, and so we find that the esthetics of dress is continually touching the ethics of dress. A perfectly healthful dress may not be in accordance with esthetic principles, but an essentially esthetic dress must be, of necessity, one that conforms to the laws of health of the body it covers. A trained gown worn

upon the street, gathering up filth and the germs of disease, is an unsightly object, and offends our esthetic sense, because it is out of harmony with the surroundings, and the wearing of it becomes a question of ethics, when we consider the harm it does in crippling its wearer and endangering the comfort and even the life of others.

It is strange that good and thinking men, as a class, do not try to further the study of woman's dress from a hygienic and moral standpoint, and do not endeavor to aid in the evolution of a more rational dress than the one that has fettered woman for so many years, and which now retards her from reaching the full development of all her powers. One would naturally think that every intelligent, conscientious man would immediately recognize the great underlying principles beneath this question of woman's dress; and would use his influence toward freeing women from their bondage to clothes; and instead of flinging ridicule and abuse, and retarding her progress, would extend a helping hand to every effort his sister is making toward gaining a higher plane of life and of action.

On the contrary, it is practically denied among men that there is any ethical principle in the dress of women. Few men have even thought of this side of the question, and but few fathers and husbands have had their attention directed to the fretfulness, ill-temper, and peevishness of women as results of false dressing, to the danger to life and limb that lurks in their gowns, to the dependence and cowardice that inevitably become characteristic of those who wear entangling skirts. If men could be aroused to the importance of this question, they would very soon realize that it concerns more important interests than their pocket-books. They would find that sons as well as daughters suffer from the physical degeneracy of their mothers, and that crime seems to be a necessary concomitant of the physically depraved. To many thinkers the question of the dress of our women has more to do with the question of temperance than prohibition or total abstinence. They

say that the vicious modes of dressing our women, are having their legitimate effect upon the children of this country, and that an unnatural craving for stimulants is one of the results of the physical deterioration of the race. Surely all these facts point to the ethical principle in dress, and demand the attention and study of the philanthropists and teachers, the legislators and leaders of our time.

Through a recognition of the importance of the ethical principles in dress much ought to be accomplished toward the evolution of sensible, healthful, and esthetic dress for women, and by this means the path would be made easier for the development of the woman of the future, who, assisted by health-restoring forms of dress, ought to be a woman with a more enduring physique than the woman of to-day, and who, with a strong and healthy body, should be in consequence a woman with a better developed brain and a more sensitive spiritual nature— a woman keenly alive to all the beauties and harmonies of nature and strong to meet the opportunities and responsibilities of her world.

WOMAN'S DRESS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SOCIOLOGY, ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR ELLEN HAYES (WELLESLEY COLLEGE) OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Evolution has been defined as the elimination of the incongruous. In the process of elimination, however, an incongruity may be accentuated. It is proposed in this paper to discuss an incongruity which has probably reached its maximum accentuation; I mean the dress of modern civilized woman, viewed in its relation to environment.

Dress originated in decoration. The first stage is one of paint and tattoo. Following this is what we may call the bear-claw necklace period. Later, with the genesis of modesty, man covers some portions of his body. Invading cold

regions, he meets the severities of climate by putting on the skins of the animals which he has slain. In a still higher stage he drapes himself with woven fabrics; and finally the male sex is wrapped in a dress conforming in shape to the outlines of the body. Taking and giving hard blows in battle, leveling forests, and building cities, man learned to dress so as to secure protection and freedom of movement. War-paint did not win battles; drapery proved an impediment. The unsuitable and fragile has been discarded, and a dress has been evolved which meets. man's needs. His two legs are plainly and warmly clad in a garment which offers the least friction with wayside objects, and hence occasions least waste of power to the wearer. It is a garment equally suitable for the drawingroom and the deck of a ship; for the street, the forest, and the mountain-top. His two arms are similarly clothed; the dress of those arms is what one would expect in a world scored with railroads and threaded with wires. For his head he has a plain covering, easily adjusted and as easily removed. His feet are well shod. His hands hold onto their ancient privilege of going bare. Primitive man fought to gain and retain; and the desire for possessions, so far from diminishing, has steadily increased. Man has continued to put wealth into such compact shape that he can carry about his person that which represents lands and goods. Besides this he chooses also to carry conveniences which are the symbols of civilization. Thus his garments have been more and more differentiated until they now have from ten to fifteen specialized receptacles. No one will claim that the dress of man is yet perfect; but it is not easy to see how any marked improvement could be made, for there is, from top to toe, a correlation between the clothing and the needs of the body to be clothed.

Consider now the dress of woman; assuming ourselves to be ignorant of the habits and pursuits of the wearer, what might we infer from the conventional dress? We notice that utility is much subordinated to ornament. The motive