Equality Page 8

  CHAPTER VIII.

  THE GREATEST WONDER YET--FASHION DETHRONED.

  "You surely can not form the slightest idea of the bodily ecstasy itgives me to have done with that horrible masquerade in mummy clothes,"exclaimed my companion as we left the house. "To think this is the firsttime we have actually been walking together!"

  "Surely you forget," I replied; "we have been out together severaltimes."

  "Out together, yes, but not walking," she answered; "at least I was notwalking. I don't know what would be the proper zoological term todescribe the way I got over the ground inside of those bags, but itcertainly was not walking. The women of your day, you see, were trainedfrom childhood in that mode of progression, and no doubt acquired someskill in it; but I never had skirts on in my life except once, in sometheatricals. It was the hardest thing I ever tried, and I doubt if I everagain give you so strong a proof of my regard. I am astonished that youdid not seem to notice what a distressful time I was having."

  But if, being accustomed, as I had been, to the gait of women hampered bydraperies, I had not observed anything unusual in Edith's walk when wehad been out on previous occasions, the buoyant grace of her carriage andthe elastic vigor of her step as she strode now by my side was arevelation of the possibilities of an athletic companionship which wasnot a little intoxicating.

  To describe in detail what I saw in my tour that day throughthe paper-process factories would be to tell an old story totwentieth-century readers; but what far more impressed me than all theingenuity and variety of mechanical adaptations was the workersthemselves and the conditions of their labor. I need not tell my readerswhat the great mills are in these days--lofty, airy halls, walled withbeautiful designs in tiles and metal, furnished like palaces, with everyconvenience, the machinery running almost noiselessly, and every incidentof the work that might be offensive to any sense reduced by ingeniousdevices to the minimum. Neither need I describe to you the princelyworkers in these palaces of industry, the strong and splendid men andwomen, with their refined and cultured faces, prosecuting with theenthusiasm of artists their self-chosen tasks of combining use andbeauty. You all know what your factories are to-day; no doubt you findthem none too pleasant or convenient, having been used to such things allyour lives. No doubt you even criticise them in various ways as fallingshort of what they might be, for such is human nature; but if you wouldunderstand how they seem to me, shut your eyes a moment and try toconceive in fancy what our cotton and woolen and paper mills were like ahundred years ago.

  Picture low rooms roofed with rough and grimy timbers and walled withbare or whitewashed brick. Imagine the floor so crammed with machineryfor economy of space as to allow bare room for the workers to writheabout among the flying arms and jaws of steel, a false motion meaningdeath or mutilation. Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air,with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, andfoul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang and clash of machinery like thescreech of a tornado.

  But these were only the material conditions of the scene. Shut your eyesonce more, that you may see what I would fain forget I had ever seen--theinterminable rows of women, pallid, hollow-cheeked, with faces vacant andstolid but for the accent of misery, their clothing tattered, faded, andfoul; and not women only, but multitudes of little children, weazen-facedand ragged--children whose mother's milk was barely out of their blood,their bones yet in the gristle.

  * * * * *

  Edith introduced me to the superintendent of one of the factories, ahandsome woman of perhaps forty years. She very kindly showed us aboutand explained matters to me, and was much interested in turn to know whatI thought of the modern factories and their points of contrast with thoseof former days. Naturally, I told her that I had been impressed, far morethan by anything in the new mechanical appliances, with thetransformation in the condition of the workers themselves.

  "Ah, yes," she said, "of course you would say so; that must indeed be thegreat contrast, though the present ways seem so entirely a matter ofcourse to us that we forget it was not always so. When the workers settlehow the work shall be done, it is not wonderful that the conditionsshould be the pleasantest possible. On the other hand, when, as in yourday, a class like your private capitalists, who did not share the work,nevertheless settled how it should be done it is not surprising that theconditions of industry should have been as barbarous as they were,especially when the operation of the competitive system compelled thecapitalists to get the most work possible out of the workers on thecheapest terms."

  "Do I understand." I asked, "that the workers in each trade regulate forthemselves the conditions of their particular occupation?"

  "By no means. The unitary character of our industrial administration isthe vital idea of it, without which it would instantly becomeimpracticable. If the members of each trade controlled its conditions,they would presently be tempted to conduct it selfishly and adversely tothe general interest of the community, seeking, as your privatecapitalists did, to get as much and give as little as possible. And notonly would every distinctive class of workers be tempted to act in thismanner, but every subdivision of workers in the same trade wouldpresently be pursuing the same policy, until the whole industrial systemwould become disintegrated, and we should have to call the capitalistsfrom their graves to save us. When I said that the workers regulated theconditions of work, I meant the workers as a whole--that is, the peopleat large, all of whom are nowadays workers, you know. The regulation andmutual adjustment of the conditions of the several branches of theindustrial system are wholly done by the General Government. At the sametime, however, the regulation of the conditions of work in any occupationis effectively, though indirectly, controlled by the workers in itthrough the right we all have to choose and change our occupations.Nobody would choose an occupation the conditions of which were notsatisfactory, so they have to be made and kept satisfactory."

  * * * * *

  While we were at the factory the noon hour came, and I asked thesuperintendent and Edith to go out to lunch with me. In fact, I wanted toascertain whether my newly acquired credit card was really good foranything or not.

  "There is one point about your modern costumes," I said, as we sat at ourtable in the dining hall, "about which I am rather curious. Will you tellme who or what sets the fashions?"

  "The Creator sets the only fashion which is now generally followed,"Edith answered.

  "And what is that?"

  "The fashion of our bodies," she answered.

  "Ah, yes, very good," I replied, "and very true, too, of your costumes,as it certainly was not of ours; but my question still remains. Allowingthat you have a general theory of dress, there are a thousand differencesin details, with possible variations of style, shape, color, material,and what not. Now, the making of garments is carried on, I suppose, likeall your other industries, as public business, under collectivemanagement, is it not?"

  "Certainly. People, of course, can make their own clothes if they wishto, just as they can make anything else, but it would be a great waste oftime and energy."

  "Very well. The garments turned out by the factories have to be made upon some particular design or designs. In my day the question of designsof garments was settled by society leaders, fashion journals, edicts fromParis, or the Lord knows how; but at any rate the question was settledfor us, and we had nothing to do but to obey. I don't say it was a goodway; on the contrary, it was detestable; but what I want to know is, Whatsystem have you instead, for I suppose you have now no society leaders,fashion journals, or Paris edicts? Who settles the question what youshall wear?"

  "We do," replied the superintendent.

  "You mean, I suppose, that you determine it collectively by democraticmethods. Now, when I look around me in this dining hall and see thevariety and beauty of the costumes, I am bound to say that the result ofyour system seems satisfactory, and yet I think it would strike even thestrongest be
liever in the principle of democracy that the rule of themajority ought scarcely to extend to dress. I admit that the yoke offashion which we bowed to was very onerous, and yet it was true that ifwe were brave enough, as few indeed were, we might defy it; but with thestyle of dress determined by the administration, and only certain stylesmade, you must either follow the taste of the majority or lie abed. Whydo you laugh? Is it not so?"

  "We were smiling," replied the superintendent, "on account of a slightmisapprehension on your part. When I said that we regulated questions ofdress, I meant that we regulated them not collectively, by majority, butindividually, each for himself or herself."

  "But I don't see how you can," I persisted. "The business of producingfabrics and of making them into garments is carried on by the Government.Does not that imply, practically, a governmental control or initiative infashions of dress?"

  "Dear me, no!" exclaimed the superintendent. "It is evident, Mr. West, asindeed the histories say, that governmental action carried with it inyour day an arbitrary implication which it does not now. The Governmentis actually now what it nominally was in the America of your day--theservant, tool, and instrument by which the people give effect to theirwill, itself being without will. The popular will is expressed in twoways, which are quite distinct and relate to different provinces: First,collectively, by majority, in regard to blended, mutually involvedinterests, such as the large economic and political concerns of thecommunity; second, personally, by each individual for himself or herselfin the furtherance of private and self-regarding matters. The Governmentis not more absolutely the servant of the collective will in regard tothe blended interests of the community than it is of the individualconvenience in personal matters. It is at once the august representativeof all in general concerns, and everybody's agent, errand boy, andfactotum for all private ends. Nothing is too high or too low, too greator too little, for it to do for us.

  "The dressmaking department holds its vast provision of fabrics andmachinery at the absolute disposition of the whims of every man or womanin the nation. You can go to one of the stores and order any costume ofwhich a historical description exists, from the days of Eve to yesterday,or you can furnish a design of your own invention for a brand-newcostume, designating any material at present existing, and it will besent home to you in less time than any nineteenth-century dressmaker evereven promised to fill an order. Really, talking of this, I want you tosee our garment-making machines in operation. Our paper garments, ofcourse, are seamless, and made wholly by machinery. The apparatus beingadjustable to any measure, you can have a costume turned out for youcomplete while you are looking over the machine. There are, of course,some general styles and shapes that are usually popular, and the storeskeep a supply of them on hand, but that is for the convenience of thepeople, not of the department, which holds itself always ready to followthe initiative of any citizen and provide anything ordered in the leastpossible time."

  "Then anybody can set the fashion?" I said.

  "Anybody can set it, but whether it is followed depends on whether it isa good one, and really has some new point in respect of convenience orbeauty; otherwise it certainly will not become a fashion. Its vogue willbe precisely proportioned to the merit the popular taste recognizes init, just as if it were an invention in mechanics. If a new idea in dresshas any merit in it, it is taken up with great promptness, for our peopleare extremely interested in enhancing personal beauty by costume, and theabsence of any arbitrary standards of style such as fashion set for youleaves us on the alert for attractions and novelties in shape and color.It is in variety of effect that our mode of dressing seems indeed todiffer most from yours. Your styles were constantly being varied by theedicts of fashion, but as only one style was tolerated at a time, you hadonly a successive and not a simultaneous variety, such as we have. Ishould imagine that this uniformity of style, extending, as I understandit often did, to fabric, color, and shape alike, must have caused yourgreat assemblages to present a depressing effect of sameness.

  "That was a fact fully admitted in my day," I replied. "The artists werethe enemies of fashion, as indeed all sensible people were, butresistance was in vain. Do you know, if I were to return to thenineteenth century, there is perhaps nothing else I could tell mycontemporaries of the changes you have made that would so deeply impressthem as the information that you had broken the scepter of fashion, thatthere were no longer any arbitrary standards in dress recognized, andthat no style had any other vogue that might be given it by individualrecognition of its merits. That most of the other yokes humanity woremight some day be broken, the more hopeful of us believed, but the yokeof fashion we never expected to be freed from, unless perhaps in heaven."

  "The reign of fashion, as the history books call it, always seemed to meone of the most utterly incomprehensible things about the old order,"said Edith. "It would seem that it must have had some great force behindit to compel such abject submission to a rule so tyrannical. And yetthere seems to have been no force at all used. Do tell us what the secretwas, Julian?"

  "Don't ask me," I protested. "It seemed to be some fell enchantment thatwe were subject to--that is all I know. Nobody professed to understandwhy we did as we did. Can't you tell us," I added, turning to thesuperintendent--"how do you moderns diagnose the fashion mania that madeour lives such a burden to us?"

  "Since you appeal to me," replied our companion, "I may say that thehistorians explain the dominion of fashion in your age as the naturalresult of a disparity of economic conditions prevailing in a community inwhich rigid distinctions of caste had ceased to exist. It resulted fromtwo factors: the desire of the common herd to imitate the superior class,and the desire of the superior class to protect themselves from thatimitation and preserve distinction of appearance. In times and countrieswhere class was caste, and fixed by law or iron custom, each caste hadits distinctive dress, to imitate which was not allowed to another class.Consequently fashions were stationary. With the rise of democracy, thelegal protection of class distinctions was abolished, while the actualdisparity in social ranks still existed, owing to the persistence ofeconomic inequalities. It was now free for all to imitate the superiorclass, and thus seem at least to be as good as it, and no kind ofimitation was so natural and easy as dress. First, the socially ambitiousled off in this imitation; then presently the less pretentious wereconstrained to follow their example, to avoid an apparent confession ofsocial inferiority; till, finally, even the philosophers had to followthe herd and conform to the fashion, to avoid being conspicuous by anexceptional appearance."

  "I can see," said Edith, "how social emulation should make the massesimitate the richer and superior class, and how the fashions should inthis way be set; but why were they changed so often, when it must havebeen so terribly expensive and troublesome to make the changes?"

  "For the reason," answered the superintendent, "that the only way thesuperior class could escape their imitators and preserve theirdistinction in dress was by adopting constantly new fashions, only todrop them for still newer ones as soon as they were imitated.--Does itseem to you, Mr. West, that this explanation corresponds with the factsas you observed them?"

  "Entirely so," I replied. "It might be added, too, that the changes infashions were greatly fomented and assisted by the self-interest of vastindustrial and commercial interests engaged in purveying the materials ofdress and personal belongings. Every change, by creating a demand for newmaterials and rendering those in use obsolete, was what we called goodfor trade, though if tradesmen were unlucky enough to be caught by asudden change of fashion with a lot of goods on hand it meant ruin tothem. Great losses of this sort, indeed, attended every change infashion."

  "But we read that there were fashions in many things besides dress," saidEdith.

  "Certainly," said the superintendent. "Dress was the stronghold and mainprovince of fashion because imitation was easiest and most effectivethrough dress, but in nearly everything that pertained to the habits ofliving, eating, drinking, r
ecreation, to houses, furniture, horses andcarriages, and servants, to the manner of bowing even, and shaking hands,to the mode of eating food and taking tea, and I don't know whatelse--there were fashions which must be followed, and were changed assoon as they were followed. It was indeed a sad, fantastic race, and, Mr.West's contemporaries appear to have fully realized it; but as long associety was made up of unequals with no caste barriers to preventimitation, the inferiors were bound to ape the superiors, and thesuperiors were bound to baffle imitation, so far as possible, by seekingever-fresh devices for expressing their superiority."

  "In short," I said, "our tedious sameness in dress and manners appears toyou to have been the logical result of our lack of equality inconditions."

  "Precisely so," answered the superintendent. "Because you were not equal,you made yourself miserable and ugly in the attempt to seem so. Theaesthetic equivalent of the moral wrong of inequality was the artisticabomination of uniformity. On the other hand, equality creates anatmosphere which kills imitation, and is pregnant with originality, forevery one acts out himself, having nothing to gain by imitating any oneelse."