Page:May Walden - Socialism and the Home (1900).pdf/8

 8 in the "exclusive" set too, until the poorest class is reached which must content itself with "misfits," imitations and shoddy goods.

This chasing after the fashions is one of the best evidences of class divisions that women have. It is safe to say that more time, energy and wear and tear of the nerves is due to our trying to keep in style, or to finding out what "they" wear, than any other one occupation of a woman's life. "They"—meaning the leaders of fashion—are usually such libertines as King Edward VII., or mistresses of his, who rival each other in dress in order to win his favor, or that of some other leader of the "fast set." Then come others who dress as near like the "leaders" as possible, in order to make believe they belong in the same set and have just as much money to spend. Then follow others who must put up with goods made to look like the best, but "cut from the same patterns as the most expensive fabrics" as the advertisements say, and so on until the garments which the poor can afford to buy are the shoddiest that a manufacturer ever made profits on. Every woman wants to get the most she can for her money and so she must go shopping on the days when special bargains are offered. Any one who has been in one of the stores and formed a part of the struggling, sweating crowd, hauling and pulling goods over trying to find something that suits both taste and pocketbook, will be ready to exclaim as I heard one shop girl do to another, "Don't it make you sick!" Doesn't it make you sick, my fellow women, to think of thousands of our class pinching, scraping, drudging in order to ape the fashions of those drones for whom we slave and whom we support in their idleness and folly? We have done it and our forefathers and foremothers have done it because we did not know a better way. We are learning now that we do not have to keep on this way.

Notice how a woman's form has been padded