A curious person can easily satisfy himself as to the quality of these “all wool” garments by boiling them in caustic alkali. The experiment is very simple and quite conclusive of the amount of wool in the article. If it is “all wool” the alkali makes short work of it, no residue is left after the boiling. Silk will also disappear. Cotton is untouched. Take a baby’s shirt for which you pay 50 cents with the solemn assurance that it is “every stitch wool.” It is well-shaped, finished with a neat shell edge apparently of silk, a ribbon down the front for the buttons, three rows of “silk” stitching around the sleeves. Cut the garment into two pieces and boil one for twenty minutes in a strong solution of alkali. The pieces treated compare now very favorably, fleecy lining shell edge and all, with the piece untouched. The ribbon alone has disappeared. There is not a thread of wool in it. Try another experiment with a girl’s sleeveless vest for wearing over the gown under the coat. This garment will cost $1.25 in an East Side shop. It feels like wool and is sold for wool, but it comes out of the pot intact, a strong, durable cotton yarn vest which could have had but a small fraction of wool in it in the first place if, indeed, it had any. Its real worth is not over 25 cents. This same experiment will show similar adulteration in many of the blankets and much of the dress goods and suitings sold to the unknowing as all wool. Vast quantities of so-called “cotton worsteds” are manufactured annually. The amount of wool in these goods has been steadily decreasing in the last few years, falling from 50 per cent to 25 per cent, and from there to practically all cotton, immense quantities of the last being manufactured for boys’ and men’s wear. It is from cotton worsteds and cheap shoddies that the $8.00 and $10.00 suits for women, the $10.00 and $12.00 suits for men, are generally made. The goods may be sold by the manufacturer for what they are, but at the counter the purchaser receives the express or implied assurance that they are all wool. To such lengths has the adulteration gone that it may be laid down as a fact that people on small incomes to-day rarely if ever wear anything but cotton and shoddy mixtures. Now, that things have changed is not proof that they are worse. Because a great number of us in the United States cannot get the woollen blankets, shawls, and clothes which we once had and which are still accessible at low prices to the European laborer and peasant is not proof that we have not a better substitute. May it not be that woollen garments, blankets, and suits are a superstition? Are we not just as well off clothed in cotton substitutes?