They waste them
because they are cheap, carrying them loose in their pockets, that they
may always have enough, with some to throw away.

"Take the article of hoop-skirts. Women did very well without them, and
looked quite as well, at least in my opinion. But some ingenious man
conceived the idea of tempting them with a new want, and they were at
once persuaded into believing that hoop-skirts were indispensable to a
genteel appearance. They were adopted all over the country with a
rapidity that outstripped that of the cuffs and collars,--not, perhaps,
that as many were manufactured, because, if that had been the case, they
could not have been consumed, unless each woman had worn two or three.
And they may in fact wear two or three each,--I don't know how that
is,--but look at the waste already visible. Every week or two, new
patterns are brought out, better, lighter, or prettier than the last;
whereupon the old ones are thrown aside, though not half worn. Why,
Miss, do you know that your sex are carrying about them some thousands
of tons of brass and steel in the shape of these skirts? As to the
waste, it is already so large as to have become a public nuisance. An
old hat or shoe may be given away to somebody,--an old scrubbing-brush
may be disposed of by putting it into the stove; but as to an old skirt,
who wants it? You cannot burn it; the very beggars will not take it; and
hence it is thrown into the street, or into the alley close to your
door, where it continues for months to trip up the feet of every
wayfaring man quite as provokingly as it sometimes tripped up those of
the wearer. It is the waste of hoop-skirts, as much as anything else,
that keeps the manufacture so brisk.

"Then, again," he continued, as if expanded by the skirts he had just
been speaking of, "look at the long dresses which the ladies now wear.
See how the most costly stuffs are dragging over the pavement, sweeping
up the filth with which it is covered. To speak of the foul condition
into which such draggletailed dresses must soon get is positively
sickening. If a dozen of them were thrown into a closet and left there
for a few hours, I have no doubt they would burn of spontaneous
combustion."

I was half inclined to take fire myself at hearing this, but remained
silent, and he proceeded.

"See, too, what a constant fidget the wearers are in, under the
incumbrance of a dress so foolishly long as to require the use of both
hands to keep i