PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 85, 10 December 1913, Page 4

PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT.

Mr Louis Housman, the English author and artist, recently wrote on dress, remarking that it lias been the product of social conditions, rather than the cause. Highlanders, Arabs, Creeks, and Albanians all enjoy the freedom of petticoats, and when employed in similar occupations the dress or men and women tends to assimilate, [f petticoats are restricted to one sex, a condition resulting in petticoat government is thereby set up. The wearer Of petticoats must either govern their petticoats or the petticoats must govern them. If they arc not allowed to ho restrictive of activity they are noble. If they arc allowed unduly to limit rights and freedom of action they become ignoble. The term ‘petticoat government,’ as applied to women, never has meant the assumption by her of civic powers for civic ends. It means merely the assumption of individual powers for individual Cods and for the assertion of her intUience. -So long as woman’s sphere is circumscribed and limited her go- \ eminent will be of the petticoat type, and will be restricted more or less exclusively to the sphere of home instead of having her narrow domestic horizon widened as it ought to he.