DRESS IN RELATION TO HEALTH. 191 



the pressure may be sustained, the corset itself acting as a kind of 

 shield between the body and the bands, and acting also in some way 

 like a shoulder for supporting the bands. When the dresses which are 

 thus sustained are short and of light texture, the weight and incum- 

 brance are considerable ; but when the dresses are long, when they 

 trail on the ground, and when they are made of heavy material, the 

 weight and incumbrance are drags on the life, which I suspect the 

 strongest man could not sustain while engaged in his ordinary avoca- 

 tions. 



I am rejoiced to see that ladies themselves, who are writing intel- 

 ligently on this topic, are earnestly teaching in respect to it what is 

 both common sense and common humanity. I agree with these that 

 the tax of carrying clothes from the waist is utterly unjustifiable, and 

 that the parts that should bear the burden are the shoulders and none 

 other. In this regard women ought to be placed under just the same 

 favorable conditions for movement of the body as men, and the 

 greatest emancipation that woman will ever have achieved will have 

 arrived when she has discovered and carried out this practical im- 

 provement. 



In saying this I do not for a moment wish to suggest that the out- 

 ward appearance of the feminine dress should be like that of the mas- 

 culine dress. To the woman, the flowing robe which even trespasses a 

 little on the ground is most graceful, and is signally characteristic of 

 feminine beauty. I would, therefore, that it should remain in all its 

 gracefulness, but in so far as everything else is concerned, for every 

 circumstance in which health is involved, for warmth, for freedom of 

 movement, for mode by which the dress is carried from the shoulders, 

 I would say, Let the women have all the advantages which now be- 

 long to men. 



For any one who will for a moment think candidly must admit that 

 the dress of men, however bad it may be in taste, or in whatever bad 

 taste it may have been conceived, is, in respect to health, infinitely 

 superior to that of women. In the dress of the man every part of the 

 body is equally covered. The middle of the body is not enveloped in 

 a number of close layers, while the lower limbs are left without close 

 clothing altogether. The center of the body is not strained with a 

 weight which almost drags down the lower limbs and back. The chest 

 is not exposed to every wind that blows, and the feet are not bewil- 

 dered with heavy garments which they have to kick forward or drag 

 from behind with every advancing step. The body is clothed equally. 

 The clothing is borne by the shoulders ; it gives free motion to breath- 

 ing ; it gives freedom of motion to the circulation ; it makes no un- 

 due pressure on the digestive organs ; it leaves the limbs free ; it is 

 easily put on and off ; and it allows of ready change in vicissitudes of 

 weather. These are the advantages of modern attire for the man, and 

 all I claim is that they should, by faithful copy, be extended to the 



