222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



garment and bent into the form of hooks. Buckles, and finally 

 buttons, took the place of the primitive pins and hooks. But 

 women still use the metal pins, and the primitive lack of definite 

 correspondence between the dress and the body is seen, for in- 

 stance, in the hat or bonnet, which does not fit the head and must 

 be fastened on with strings or pins. This retarded development 

 and absence of differentiation in woman's dress is curiously illus- 

 trated in the case of shoes. Only a few decades ago girls' and 

 women's shoes were made straight and worn indiscriminately on 

 either foot, while men's shoes were uniformly made rights and 

 lefts. In many country stores old women's shoes may still be 

 found made straight, while women's overshoes and rubbers are 

 commonly so made at present, and are worn on either foot. 



But the most striking case of retarded development in woman's 

 dress is seen in the persistence of the idea that dress is not so 

 much a protection for the body as a symbol of the wealth of the 

 wearer or the wearer's family. In the more civilized societies 

 now it is no longer possible to judge of a man's wealth by his 

 attire ; but to the same extent this can not be said of his wife and 

 daughters. In the case of the latter the two primitive purposes 

 of dress ornamentation and expenditure are still ascendant. We 

 see the same display of rare and costly furs and feathers, of gold 

 and diamonds, of velvets, laces, and silks, and of harmony of 

 colors, and a somewhat constant relation between the cost of such 

 display and the wealth of the owner. In her emancipation from 

 the tyranny of fashion in dress woman has made less progress 

 than man. In slave-like obedience thereto she submits to fre- 

 quent and expensive changes in style, to heavy and cumber- 

 some garments involving the sacrifice of comfort, health, and 

 economy. 



In justice to the above principles it is only fair to state that it 

 is not urged by those who bring them forward that the dress of 

 man is perfect or free from savage elements, or that the aesthetic 

 motive common to the dress of the primitive man and of civilized 

 woman is not a worthy one, but only that in the evolution of dress 

 there is a definite progressive movement from the primitive con- 

 ception of display and expenditure to the modern conception of 

 utility and comfort, and that in this movement woman's dress has 

 been retarded or arrested at a primitive stage. 



Certain other facts than those of dress point, it is said, to 

 woman's arrested development. The division of labor which 

 marks the progress of civilization has reached no such extent in 

 the work of woman as in that of man. In fact, it may be said 

 that there is in woman's work hardly any division of labor, 

 except in so far as, in recent years, she has entered upon pursuits 

 formerly followed only by men. As we have seen that women 



