t at a cleanly elevation. I presume the ladies wear these
ridiculous trains because they think they look more graceful in them.
But do you know, Miss, that our sex feel the most profound contempt for
a woman who is so weak as to make such an exhibition of folly? It might
do for great people, at a great party,--but in dirty, sloppy, muddy
streets, by servant-girls as well as by fashionable women, it is
considered not only indecent, but as evincing a want of common sense.
Moreover, the quantity of material destroyed by thus dragging over the
pavement is very great. It must amount to thousands of yards annually,
and it appears to me that the more it costs per yard, the more of it is
devoted to street-sweeping. Here is wastefulness by wholesale."

"But do you think the same remarks apply to the case of the greatly
increased amount of clothing that is now manufactured by the
sewing-machines?" I inquired.

"Certainly, Miss," he responded. "There are not a great many more
people in this country now to be clothed than there were three years
ago; yet at least three times as much clothing is manufactured. The
question is as to how it is consumed. I do not suppose that men wear two
coats or shirts, or that any ever went without them. But the increased
cheapness has led to increased waste, exactly as in the case of pins and
matches. Clothing being obtainable at lower prices than were ever known
before in this country, it is purchased in unnecessary quantities, just
like the newspapers, and not taken care of. Thousands of men now have
two or three coats where they formerly had only one. It is these extra
outfits, and this continual waste, that keep up the production at which
you are so much astonished. The facts afford you another illustration of
the great law of supply and demand,--that as you cheapen and multiply
products or manufactures of any kind, so will the consumption of them
increase. If pound-cake could be had at the price of corn-bread, does it
not strike you that the community would consume little else? The cry for
pound-cake would be universal,--it would be, in fact, in everybody's
mouth."

"But," I again inquired, "will this extraordinary demand for the
products of the sewing-machine continue? I have told you that I am a
sewing-girl, and hence feel a deep interest in learning all I can upon
the subject."

"Judging from appearances, it must," was his reply. "We are the most
extravagant people in the world. We consum