Now and then critics of the Spirit of prophecy have sought to represent that gift as leading our church sisters into something ridiculous in the way of dress in the early times. Counsel from this source led to the adoption of many health reform principles and to the establishment of the Western Health Reform Institute as a center for education in health lines. It likewise pointed out unhealthful and immodest features
of the then popular style of women's dress,— bustles, hoop skirts, trains, etc.,—and there was a call for dress reform among the remnant people. A committee of sisters in the old Battle Creek church studied the instruction given, and devised a style in harmony with the principles of reform laid down. This was adopted by the staff of the Institute and advocated in its journal, the Health Reformer.
A glance at the background of the history is sufficient to show that there was nothing absurd or ridiculous about the style adopted. I can well recall the days of my boyhood, the later days of the "dress reform" period among us. Some wore the reform dress in Battle Creek; many did not. In my irreverent childhood, when I was ready to laugh at anything odd, I can never recall thinking of the reform dress of our sisters as anything to smile at. I recall how numbers of the sisters wore such neat and trim reform costumes as compared with the conventional style, that even my small boy's untrained judgment approved.
Susan B. Anthony Pioneers
Recently an anonymous critic sent in to our office a postcard, on the front of which was stamped a crude representation of the old reform dress, with the typewritten title: "Ellen's dress." This familiarity of phrase expresses disrespect for a woman. To give a parallel illustration, it is the same spirit that greeted Susan B. Anthony with catcalls on the platform and remarks on the street, by familiarly calling her "Susan"—similarly showing disrespect for a woman standing for unpopular reform. It seems incredible now, to think of the opposition that that woman of education and of refined old Quaker stock met with when first, as a teacher in an educational convention, she rose to speak of the responsibility of women in the teaching profession.
She endured the same rebuffs for a period in the pioneer days of the temperance agitation; and later as leader of the cause of woman suffrage.
Be it remembered also that Miss Anthony wore a reform-dress costume in her public work for several years, thus doing her part to encourage women to free themselves from the unhealthful bondage of the conventional style of that period. The dress that she and Elizabeth Cady-Stanton and other leaders wore in the fifties was more extreme than any that our church sisters designed in the sixties.* In fact, it was to get something equally as healthful and yet less conspicuous than reform styles being worn by many women of prominence, that our sisters set their hearts and hands as designers in 1865.
As these women, who bear honored names in the history of their country, were drawn more and more to concentrate on the question of woman's rights, which they felt was the key to other reform problems, they dropped the temperance issue largely, and discontinued the dress agitation. In announcing her discontinuance of the reform costume, Miss Anthony wrote to Mrs. Stanton: "To be successful, a person must attempt only one reform, and I shall always fight to keep woman's rights free from every other issue."
This nation now delights to honor the pioneers of the cause of women. In Iwo, at the great congress of women in Washington, D.C., when Miss Anthony, in ripe age, led her successor to the chair, the pioneer leader was given an ovation such as few persons have ever received. There is pathos in her remark on that occasion, and a lesson for all time in the words she spoke regarding the change she had lived to see in public opinion. She said: "Once I was the most hated and reviled of women,"—and here, says the record, her voice broke for the only time,—"but now it seems as if everyone loves me."
And now, a visitor to the capitol in Washington may find among the statuary groups of statesmen, social builders, and pioneers of American history, a rough-hewn white marble block, out of which rise the portrait busts of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady-Stanton. And, remember, both of these women were exponents of the cause of dress reform in their earlier work on the platform, in society, and in public meetings. And further, you may recall that only once in the history of this country has the government issued a postage stamp bearing the portrait of a woman honored for her work in public life. What portrait was that ?—Susan B. Anthony, whose likeness appears on a three-cent stamp, 5937 printin... It is only fair to take this glance at the background of reform history, when religious prejudice seeks to heap ridicule upon, our sisters of the sixties who also had their part in dress reform, as well as in health reform generally.
The scorn that some of these women prominent in public and social life bore for their principles, helped to focus attention upon the need of dress reform and set in motion the idea that women ought to have freedom for healthful out-of-door activities. This, as the classic story of the life and work of Susan B. Anthony says, "eventually made a short dress an acknowledged necessity."
It was not all to be jeers from the thoughtless. There were cheers from many sides. The Washington Telegram of those days said: "We look forward with pleasure to the day on which every well-dressed lady, here and elsewhere, will adopt this sensible costume." And the Boston Commonwealth, in enthusiastic praise, said : "The general adoption of the dress will do more for the national wealth than all the mines in California, and more for the national health than all the discoveries in medicine since Galen. These are our sincere opinions."
Promoted in Health Centers
But the worldly-minded of that day were not yet ready to follow the lead toward reform. Mrs. Stanton, speaking of opposition to dress reform and announcing her discontinuance of the reform mode, said she never again would wonder why Chinese women of that time still bound the feet of their girls according to immemorial custom. "Great are the penalties," she said, "of those who dare resist the behests of tyrant Custom."
At the same time, however, and even before these women of prominence, with their associates, had given the idea of dress reform such publicity, there were certain health centers over the country where the more hygienic manner of dress was being quietly followed. An increasing wave of interest in health and hygiene was spreading abroad in those days, along with the rising interest in temperance. Hydropathic institutions were operating, and it was while recovering from illness in one of these "water cures" that Miss Anthony had first seen the advantages of more hygienic dress. The three-volume story of her life by Ida Husted Harper, tells how these women, engaged in women's cause, first learned of the reform dress :
It was first introduced at the various water cures to relieve sick and delicate women, often rendered so by their unhealthful mode of dress, and was strongly recommended in the water-cure journals. . . . The proprietors of the water cures were, for the most part, in touch with all reform movements, and their hospitality was freely extended to those engaged in them. In this way the women had opportunity to see the comfort which patients enjoyed in their loose, short garments, and began to ask why they also should not adopt what seemed to them a rational dress."—"Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony," Vol. 1, p. 112.
Crinolines and Hoop Skirts Dominant
The idea of dress reform was continually promoted from the health centers, even after the platform leaders in the woman's-rights agitation dropped this feature from their program. ire of today can hardly realize the fetters that bound women of those days. First were the crinolines—the balloonlike hoop skirts. One woman publicist of today, Dr. Maude Royden, of England, pastor of one of the independent (Congregational) churches, wrote a few years ago in the Ladies' Home Journal:
"My own mother, who is in most things a great admirer of all that is old-fashioned, told me she considered crinolines the most absolutely indecent garments ever invented for feminine wear. Yet she herself and every respectable woman wore these indecent crinolines."—March, 1924.
Covering the ten-year period from 186o, Elisabeth McClellan's "Historic Dress in America" says:
"It seems almost incredible that women of judgment and taste could ever have adopted this monstrosity of fashion. . .Nevertheless, there are reams of contemporary evidence to prove that it was Universally worn and by women of all classes."—Page 263.
Even the historian must needs exclaim over the peculiar development, as note Justin McCarthy, in his "History of England in Our Times :"
"The early sixties saw in this and most other civilized countries the reign of the crinoline. . I may say, without fear of contradiction, that no one who was not living at the time can form any adequate idea of the grotesque effect produced on the outer aspects of social life by this article of feminine costume."
Critics of the first heroic efforts of enlightened women to devise something better surely cannot have read the history. This issue of woman's dress creeps even into the wartime history of the White House. The story is told of a young woman who dared the doorkeepers and got into Abraham Lincoln's office to plead for the life of her brother, a soldier who had been condemned by court martial for an offense which was really not serious. The President was well aware of the "whippings," as he called it, administered to him by the press for his tenderheartedness in such cases. He said to the tearful girl:
"My poor girl, you have come here with no governor, or Senator., or member of Congress to plead your cause. You seem honest and truthful; and you don't wear hoop skirts—and I will be 'whipped,' but I will pardon your brother."
As the crinolines passed out, the trailing skirt took the field. Anybody over threescore and ten knows about that. We impolite small boys of the period did laugh to see the women's skirts dragging over the ground, sweeping up dust and pebbles in dry weather, and setting little mud pellets rolling in their wake in rainy weather. They could do little out of doors in bad weather, for both hands were needed to hold the skirts. Let no one try to deride the dress reform of our sisters as ridiculous, for some of us remember what it was that our sisters were protesting against.
________ To be concluded in August
* In a book by Mrs. Rheta Childe Dorr, entitled "Susan B. Anthony: The Woman Who Changed the Mind of a Nation," there is given a photograph of a portion of a page in a woman's magazine of the time, The Lily (January, 1852), showing Mrs. Stanton in the reform dress, her own autograph marking the genuineness of the picture.
