GIRLS’ DRESSES.

Shannon News, 25 October 1921, Page 3

GIRLS’ DRESSES.

MADE A LABOUR ISSUE

Chicago, September 27

Mamie Smith’s short skirt, bobbed hair, and silken-clad ankles have be come a labour issue..

Organised labour, perturbed over the steadily-increasing agitation by big employers throughout the country to influence the styles of their flapper employees, has come out as champion of bobbed hair, short skirts, silk stockings, rouge powder, naked earseverything that combs under the classification of “personal liberty for the working girl."

Mamie’s chivalrous spokesman here is John Fitzpatrick, who, while out of touch in style himself, wearing suspenders and square-toed shoes, says it’s nobody’s business how Mamie dresses so long as she doesn’t get pinched. John’s.say-so counts, too, as he is president of the Chicago Federation of Labour, and right now he is engaged in telling Marshall' Field and Co. (the big departmental store people), through pamphlets distributed in the State Street department store district, where to get off on this style question. Marshall Field insists J Mamie wear ’em to the shoe tips, and avoid spangles of all kinds.

“How’s that for codfish aristocracy ” said Fitzpatrick, as he flapped his suspenders in some heat. “What next? They’ve taken personal liberty away from the working man—see \vhat’s happening to the working girl. If a girs wants to bob her hair o r wear her skirts knee length, what’s it to her boss’s business. No man has Thq right to censorship. Only an arrogant boss would assume that right. The working girl must express her individuality in her own way. Make her wear black and act servile and you destroy all heA self-expression.' It’s a form of economic slavery. 'American girls should not be placed bn a lower level than the people with whom they come in contact, even if they are customers.*’’ ■