Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To the Reform Dress Association : Peterboro, May 18th 1857.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 506

PETERBORO, May 18th 1857.

To the Reform Dress Association:

Much do I regret, that I cannot attend your Meeting in Syracuse 17th next month. I have to be in Wisconsin at that time.

The one great question, which underlies this dress movement, and which indeed underlies the whole movement regarding "Woman's rights," is whether she is the equal of man - one with him in the grade and dignity and responsibilities of her being, and in her capacity for knowing the past, present, and future. If she is all this, then does it irresistibly follow, that she has the same rights of person and property, whether in or out of the marriage state, which he has ; and the same right to vote ; and the same eligibility to office. Then too is her right to select industrial pursuits, and adapt the dress to them, as perfect as his. Not only would this last conclusion be obvious in the light of her equality with man, but it is obvious in the light of the fact, that her personal wants, being no less expensive than his, the means of subsistence must lie as fully within her reach as his.

If, on the other hand, woman is lower in the scale of being than man, then surely there is nothing unreasonable in his claim to prescribe the sphere of her duties and the forms of her employment; to limit her aspirations as he will; and to teach her to make his pleasure and honor her supreme aim. Now, whether in point of truth, this lower place is or is not woman's, so it is that she accepts it. She is degraded with her own consent. Call upon her to assert her rights; and she will tell you, that she has rights enough already.

I need not say that in my sight man and woman have a common nature, a common dignity, and common rights. I do not forget how many tell me that the Bible shows it to be otherwise. But perhaps as many tell me that the Bible justifies slavery, and knows one human being as a man, and another as a chattel. For my own part, I never go to the Bible to learn whether the sun shines. I never can consent to insult that book, and to stultify myself by taking to it any question, which common sense forbids me to raise. The impertinent, superstitious, and hypocritical uses made of the Bible in such directions is the chief reason why its blessed religion has not, ere this, become the religion of the whole earth. It is these uses, that, more than any other causes, multiply infidels, and threaten to bring the Bible into universal contempt. In dark ages of the world it could be endured to have the Bible called on to settle the question whether man may be turned into merchandize. The ignorance of those ages might leave it with Paul to decide whether woman is the inferior of man. But the present age is outgrowing such nonsense: and should it be convinced that the Bible justifies slavery, and that even its noble Paul alleges the inferiority of woman, it would thereby be convinced of nothing else than the mistake of Paul and the Bible.

How pitiable, how painful, is the degradation of woman! Take her, who is toiling for means to live. Her dress harmonizes with the policy of excluding her from most kinds of labor, and confines her to those few and poorly paid occupations, in which women crowd and starve each other. Nevertheless, she must not aspire to other occupations: - or, besides that her dress unfits her for them, they are all appropriated by men.

Then, to witness a still more pitiable and painful spectacle of human debasement - take her, who is called a lady, and who is clad in all the absurdities of fashion, and tricked off from head to foot with jewels and gewgaws. The high callings of her nature, and the grave and solemn purposes of human existence are, in her case, all sunk in the low and petty ambition to be a pretty doll, an attractive plaything, the bewitching idol of a bewitched man. That such a woman ignores her own sublime being, and regards man's as far higher, is manifest from the fact that she would be filled with shame to see the person of her brother, father, husband disgraced with such finery and foolery, as she fancies becomes her own. But she should believe that, in the eyes of right-minded men, her fashionable apparel dishonors her, and dishonors human nature.

When will woman give up this irrational dress for a rational one? Never until she becomes so deeply conscious of her equality with man, as to be determined to assert it in the face of ridicule, and threats, and opposition of whatever kind. Never will she consent to the exchange, until she is completely shamed out of her present degrading relations to man. The dress she now wears is adapted to her present condition. and grows out of it. It conforms to her sense of herself, and to the demands of the other sex. It is true that, in her present dress, she must be a pauper-for she cannot earn her living in it. Men can do little more than earn their living, notwithstanding their apparel is such, as to allow them to enter every employment. How poor then must they be, whose range of employment is so much narrower, and the prices for whose kinds of labor are so cheap, because those few kinds are so crowded ! France would soon be impoverished, were all her industry restricted to two or three manufactures. Such restriction would ruinously sink the price of her labor. But this very pauperism, induced by the dress of woman, falls in with the policy in her case - the policy dictated by man, and acquiesced in by woman. It is true too, that her present dress, not to speak of the other ways, in which it accounts so largely for her being sickly and feeble, greatly contributes to this end by its unadaptedness to out-of-door employments. Being much in the open air is an indispensable condition of health. Nevertheless, her health must be sacrificed to inexorable fashion; and to the cruel and murderous policy, of which I have spoken. There is not, I am willing to admit, a murderous intent in this policy; and I am also willing to admit that, in the eyes of such men, as take chivalrous and nonsensical views of woman, her helplessness in her imprisoning and graceful robes constitutes a very great charm.

I repeat, that woman will never escape from her degrading bondage to dress until the very depths of her soul are stirred with the purpose of regaining the dignity and rights of woman. . Such a purpose will be fulfilled at whatever sacrifice. Much as she suffers in her present dress, nothing short of such a purpose will lift her above continuing to consent to suffer in it. Am I asked, whether I then regard the great mass of those who have embarked in the "Woman's Rights" enterprise, as only shallow and altogether ineffectual in their purpose to recover the high level of womanhood ? I frankly answer, that I most certainly do. These ladies, who are serving the cause of "Woman's Rights" in their hoops and jewelry, often remind me of the pictures I have seen of amateur lady farmers, raking hay in the whitest gloves, and feeding pigs in flounces and furbelows. Amateur reformers are these fashionably attired and expensively decorated persons who have enlisted under the banner of "Woman's Rights." Worth no more are they as reformers than your antislavery men, who make a great ado about Kansas and the Dred Scott Decision, and yet recognize slavery as law, and shrink from being called abolitionists. The woman, who flinches at the dress point, is no less worthless to the Woman's Rights Cause, than is he to the antislavery cause, who flinches at the abolition point.

In the light of what has been said we see that your dress movement involves the whole Woman's Rights Cause. The woman, whose soul is capable of casting from her person the absurd and degrading dress, in which fashion has bound it, can aid that cause. No other woman can. Yours is just the one needed work. You are not wasting your time and breath about female suffrage, and female eligibility to office, and the relations and rights of matrimony. All this will be well and speedily disposed of, when woman shall come to feel that she is woman ; and shall therefore cast off her crippling and disgraceful dress, and clothe her person in the way demanded by the dignity of human nature and by the labors and true enjoyments of life.

Yes, your endeavor to arouse woman to such a sense of her dignity and duties, as shall lead her to clothe herself becomingly, is just what is called for. To the fashion-bound woman, who is vainly imagining that she is promoting the cause of Woman's Rights, you apply the true test. You put to her the great testing question, whether she is willing to rise up from her debasement into true womanhood, even at the great cost of shocking the world and herself too by this indispensable change in her dress. Continue, I beseech you, to apply this test. Certainly not until she shall be brought out of her clothes-prison house will any other test be needed.

I say nothing in regard to the style and cut of the dresses, that should take the place of the present abominations. For I am not a tailor, and I have neither skill nor taste in matters of dress. All I say at this point is that, in the name of a common humanity, I protest against the imprisoning and crippling of woman's person, and demand for it all the freedom to which it is entitled-all the freedom, which man claims for his own. I would add however, that deficient as I am in skill and taste in these respects, I nevertheless think that I could devise a better than the "Bloomer dress."

Very respectfully yours,

GERRIT SMITH.