438 
Annual Report of the 
this end. that dress is evidently the best which affords it in the most 
complete manner, with the least restraint. In the form of garments 
prevalent with woman, the essential features, from which fashion 
with all its caprice refuses to depart, disregard both of these partic¬ 
ulars. These first utilities are set at defiance, and dress is at once 
excessively burdensome, and excessively inadequate. Skirts at one 
time kept as far as possible from the person, at another allowed to 
wrap themselves most inconveniently about it, and at all times with 
a length as great as is consistent with any motion, answer decisive¬ 
ly the question, how can the most embarrassment and the least 
service be secured with the largest expense of material? From the 
waist downward the show of dress and the substance of dress are 
almost entirely distinct. Under garments sufficient to secure warmth 
must be worn, and to these be added a cumbersome and unwieldy 
weight of material devoted to the eye only, and sadly interfering 
with the free enjoyment of one’s active powers. No wonder that 
the crinoline skirt, reducing this theory of garments to its smallest 
terms, building up the lightest and largest frame-work of appear¬ 
ances above the substantial garments, was universally welcomed as 
a great reduction of the evil. This is the fundamental fallacy in 
female dress,’ that the greater part of it furnishes but slight protec¬ 
tion and imposes severe restrictions and unendurable burdens. 
How many ladies now walk our streets one hand exclusively devot¬ 
ed to support. 
The extent of this burden, nothing but familiarity, the stupid in¬ 
duration of custom, hides from us. The twenty or forty pounds 
of a soldier, snugly packed on his shoulders, can hardly afford so 
serious an obstacle to a day’s march as the twenty or forty yards of 
silks and woolens and cottons in upper and under-skirts, in the 
midst of which a woman habitually walks. If we consider the em¬ 
barrassment of motion, and the liability of soil, we think a yard of 
fine fabric in the one position quite the equivalent of a pound in 
the other, and thus one entire sex moves amid the pleasures and 
duties of life as burdened and beset with difficulties as when men 
make a forced march for their lives, and accepts this foolish ordi¬ 
nance of society as if it were a decree of heaven. In the woods, 
in the fields, on the paved street, how much of physical buoyancy 
and animal spirits, and thus of healthy and highest enjoyment, are 
sacrificed to a fashion for which no sound reason whatever can be 
