We began by saying that everybody has a right to be well dressed in the true meaning of the phrase. But, as Ruskin says in his grand “Letter to Young Girls,” “Although in a truly Christian land every young girl would be dressed beautifully and delightfully: in this entirely heathen and Baal-worshipping land of ours, not one girl in ten has either decent or healthy clothing, and you have no business, till this be amended, to wear anything fine yourself.” And Jean Ingelow, a writer with whose works you cannot too soon make acquaintance, brings this indictment against our sex—“For them mainly are the gorgeous pageants, are the costly clothes, the gold lace, the carpets of velvet pile, the diamonds and the splendours of life. The pride of life is in their souls, and mainly for them. It is luxury that stands in the way of the civilised world, so that men cannot marry young and be happy. For the earth does not produce unbounded riches for a few while yet the many can have enough. Equality is a word without meaning or possibility; but notwithstanding, squalor and destitution might be things outside our experience, as should be luxury and waste.” This brings us to the principle that should guide our expenditure, whether the sum at our command be large or small. Of material we should buy the best and most durable within reach of our purse. We have no right to keep people employed in weaving and making up useless and perishable shoddy articles. It is a dishonour to them to do such work, and if they are forced to do it that they may get bread to eat, we are keeping them in the worst kind of slavery. That we pay them for it does not make it any better, any more than if we paid them for any other degrading and wasteful service. We insult them by taking their industry and trampling it under foot, as if they had no concern in their work, but only in their wages. How can the industrial classes retain self-respect under such circumstances? And when self-respect is lost, respect for others always goes also. Quite lately we saw a lady sitting in a dressmaker’s room watching the “setting-up” of what was considered a very grand garment. Its materials were certainly of the costliest, but it had yards of delicate silk trailing on the ground to an extent that must have ensured their speedy destruction, even on the most ceremonious occasion, and over the short front skirt hung masses of tulle, festooned by elaborate iridescent glass drops, worthy of the decoration of a South Sea Island god! Seeing our friend’s grave face, we asked her what she was thinking of, and she replied, “I am thinking of the men who wove that silk to be trodden on, and the girls who sewed those beads to be smashed. Poor things! I would rather be the grimiest maid-of-all-work toiling for real human needs, or the roughest tailor or cobbler, working to cover honest human nakedness.”