If the number and character could be estimated of those people who have stayed away from entertainments for lack of a new gown, or dress suit, or some accessory thereof, almost every human being who has ever received an invitation would probably be included in the list. That people stay away from church for the same reason is traditional, and a favorite method of imprisonment has always been to take away formal clothing, and substitute loose garments. This trick has been successful in the instance of white slavery, for it is found that the girls are unwilling to go out into the street in the brilliant “parlor clothes” furnished to them. So deeply rooted is this fear of being wrongly dressed, and so serious may its consequences become, that it is high time that an examination into the forces behind the accepted forms of fashions be made, and our slavish adherence, not only to fashion, but often to discomfort, be shown for what it is, _a chimera which_ _we ourselves protect_, and which gives a lot of more or less unscrupulous business men their opportunity. Most people believe that fashion is a matter of our own free choice and approval; but this is not actually the case. For there is in existence to-day such a thorough understanding between the big combine of designers, department stores, wholesalers, manufacturers, textile-mill owners, etc., that our pocket-books are drained by them as systematically and coöperatively as though they belonged to a single corporation: and their profits actually and directly depend upon the extent to which they can play upon our hysterical fear of not being dressed “correctly.” Of course, the first principle of playing their game is to get control of fashion itself, to be able to swing the public taste by forcing constantly changing styles upon it: in other words, garments must _not be permitted to continue in use until they wear out_. Before a garment has come to a state of disuse, a radically new model must be presented which will make the old one look ridiculous by comparison. In the cheapest grades of manufactured garments, whose purchasers, it is safe to suppose, would keep a garment until it was worn out, by reason of poverty, the desired change is accomplished through the use of shoddy and inferior stuff. The dress of the rich woman will be discarded at the slightest hint of a change in style, while its cheaper imitations, worn by the poor, _are made of stuff deliberately calculated to last only for a season of three months_! Needless to say, the fact is not advertised to the working-woman who spends her savings on a suit at a price varying from five to eighteen dollars!