Democracy and Social Ethics | Page 9

mother has to work out largely by herself, assisted
only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "That they
do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of
mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment
of every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social
blame, a certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that
requirement. It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those
among whom we live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still
more difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the
lessened supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the
remaining children in order that one may be conventionally mourned,
but she doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done
during her first month of experience with the family since bereaved.
The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the
result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The
girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable
school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by
all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even
shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose
family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to
another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,
knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her
position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to the
amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social advancement
is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is judged largely
by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations,

her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the people whose social
opinions she most values. Her clothes are her background, and from
them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact that girls' clubs succeed
best in the business part of town, where "working girls" and "young
ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially
look very much alike. Bright and ambitious girls will come to these
down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of
subjects and listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time
before joining a club identified with their own neighborhood, where
they would be judged not solely on their own merits and the
unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by other
surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same reason,
girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little towns and
villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the front
parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the house.
These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment; they
impede the democratic relationship and add to the self-consciousness of
all concerned. Every one who has had to do with down-town girls'
clubs has had the experience of going into the home of some bright,
well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps wretched,
and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her, although the
working girl may not have been at home when the call was made, and
the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy
throughout. In some very successful down-town clubs the home
address is not given at all, and only the "business address" is required.
Have we worked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than
anything else?
The charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to
spend much money upon clothes, to care so much for "appearances."
She realizes dimly that the care for personal decoration over that for
one's home or habitat is in some way primitive and undeveloped; but
she is silenced by its obvious need. She also catches a glimpse of the
fact that the disproportionate expenditure of the poor in the matter of
clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of the rich who hide from
them the interior of their houses, and their more subtle pleasures, while
of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and their street manners.

Every one who goes shopping at the same time may see the clothes of
the richest women in town, but only those invited to her receptions see
the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her library. The poor naturally
try to bridge the difference by reproducing the street clothes which they
have seen. They are striving to conform to a common