FREAK LEGISLATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 830, 23 April 1910, Page 4

FREAK LEGISLATION.

SOME AMERICAN EFFORTS

Maryland, the State par excellence of Southern chivalry and couilrsy towards woman, is now discussing a legislative Bill making it a misdemeanour for a woman to appear in a public place in a hat exceeding loin, in diameter. It is complained that the ” peach-basket ” and 11 Merry Widow” hats in Maryland have lately attained such enormous dimensions that the wearers are technically guilty of disturbing the public peace. The Bill provides fines ranging from £2 to £'2o. This Maryland proposal is strictly on a par with the freak legislation in some ol the Western States, which includes : In Nebraska. —To compel all hotels to have bed sheets 9ft long, clean towels, and to disinfect all linen once a year. Colorado. —To make it a misdemeanour to give or take a tip, except only in the case of a sleeping oar porter.

Oregon.—To prohibit the wearing of hatpins more than gin. in length ; anything else to be declared a deadly weapon. Delaware. — To tax bachelors and gipsies, both of whom are classed as undesirable citizens. Utah. — To make it a misdemeanour not to bathe at least once a week. Texas. —To make it a criminal offence to swear over the teleohone.

Some of the measures cited are now fully operative, and there is other legislation, equally strange in character. The representative who desires to punish the wearers of big bats also desires to make it a misdemeanour for a woman to wear a hat of any sort in any theatre, music-hall, lecture room, or place of amusement. In most cases in America woman voluntarily remove their head-gear before the curtain is rung up, and if they forget they are immediately requested “to oblige the management and the people sitting behind.”