Equality

by Edward Bellamy

  CHAPTER VII.

  A STRING OF SURPRISES.

  The extremely delicate tints of Edith's costume led me to remark that thecolor effects of the modern dress seemed to be in general very light ascompared with those which prevailed in my day.

  "The result," I said, "is extremely pleasing, but if you will excuse arather prosaic suggestion, it occurs to me that with the whole nationgiven over to wearing these delicate schemes of color, the accounts forwashing must be pretty large. I should suppose they would swamp thenational treasury if laundry bills are anything like what they used tobe."

  This remark, which I thought a very sensible one, set Edith to laughing."Doubtless we could not do much else if we washed our clothes," she said;"but you see we do not wash them."

  "Not wash them!--why not?"

  "Because we don't think it nice to wear clothes again after they havebeen so much soiled as to need washing."

  "Well, I won't say that I am surprised," I replied; "in fact, I think Iam no longer capable of being surprised at anything; but perhaps you willkindly tell me what you do with a dress when it becomes soiled."

  "We throw it away--that is, it goes back to the mills to be made intosomething else."

  "Indeed! To my nineteenth-century intellect, throwing away clothing wouldseem even more expensive than washing it."

  "Oh, no, much less so. What do you suppose, now, this costume of minecost?"

  "I don't know, I am sure. I never had a wife to pay dressmaker's billsfor, but I should say certainly it cost a great deal of money."

  "Such costumes cost from ten to twenty cents," said Edith. "What do yousuppose it is made of?"

  I took the edge of her mantle between my fingers.

  "I thought it was silk or fine linen," I replied, "but I see it is not.Doubtless it is some new fiber."

  "We have discovered many new fibers, but it is rather a question ofprocess than material that I had in mind. This is not a textile fabric atall, but paper. That is the most common material for garments nowadays."

  "But--but," I exclaimed, "what if it should come on to rain on thesepaper clothes? Would they not melt, and at a little strain would they notpart?"

  "A costume such as this," said Edith, "is not meant for stormy weather,and yet it would by no means melt in a rainstorm, however severe. Forstorm-garments we have a paper that is absolutely impervious to moistureon the outer surface. As to toughness, I think you would find it as hardto tear this paper as any ordinary cloth. The fabric is so strengthenedwith fiber as to hold together very stoutly."

  "But in winter, at least, when you need warmth, you must have to fallback on our old friend the sheep."

  "You mean garments made of sheep's hair? Oh, no, there is no modern usefor them. Porous paper makes a garment quite as warm as woolen could, andvastly lighter than the clothes you had. Nothing but eider down couldhave been at once so warm and light as our winter coats of paper."

  "And cotton!--linen! Don't tell me that they have been given up, likewool?"

  "Oh, no; we weave fabrics of these and other vegetable products, and theyare nearly as cheap as paper, but paper is so much lighter and moreeasily fashioned into all shapes that it is generally preferred forgarments. But, at any rate, we should consider no material fit forgarments which could not be thrown away after being soiled. The idea ofwashing and cleaning articles of bodily use and using them over and overagain would be quite intolerable. For this reason, while we wantbeautiful garments, we distinctly do not want durable ones. In your day,it seems, even worse than the practice of washing garments to be usedagain you were in the habit of keeping your outer garments withoutwashing at all, not only day after day, but week after week, year afteryear, sometimes whole lifetimes, when they were specially valuable, andfinally, perhaps, giving them away to others. It seems that womensometimes kept their wedding dresses long enough for their daughters towear at their weddings. That would seem shocking to us, and yet, evenyour fine ladies did such things. As for what the poor had to do in theway of keeping and wearing their old clothes till they went to rags, thatis something which won't bear thinking of."

  "It is rather startling," I said, "to find the problem of clean clothingsolved by the abolition of the wash tub, although I perceive that thatwas the only radical solution. 'Warranted to wear and wash' used to bethe advertisement of our clothing merchants, but now it seems, if youwould sell clothing, you must warrant the goods neither to wear nor towash."

  "As for wearing," said Edith, "our clothing never gets the chance to showhow it would wear before we throw it away, any more than the otherfabrics, such as carpets, bedding, and hangings that we use about ourhouses."

  "You don't mean that they are paper-made also!" I exclaimed.

  "Not always made of paper, but always of some fabric so cheap that theycan be rejected after the briefest period of using. When you would haveswept a carpet we put in a new one. Where you would wash or air beddingwe renew it, and so with all the hangings about our houses so far as weuse them at all. We upholster with air or water instead of feathers. Itis more than I can understand how you ever endured your musty, fusty,dusty rooms with the filth and disease germs of whole generations storedin the woolen and hair fabrics that furnished them. When we clean out aroom we turn the hose on ceiling, walls, and floor. There is nothing toharm--nothing but tiled or other hard-finished surfaces. Our hygienistssay that the change in customs in these matters relating to the purity ofour clothing and dwellings, has done more than all our other improvementsto eradicate the germs of contagious and other diseases and relegateepidemics to ancient history.

  "Talking of paper," said Edith, extending a very trim foot by way ofattracting attention to its gear, "what do you think of our modernshoes?"

  "Do you mean that they also are made of paper?" I exclaimed.

  "Of course."

  "I noticed the shoes your father gave me were very light as compared withanything I had ever worn before. Really that is a great idea, forlightness in foot wear is the first necessity. Scamp shoemakers used toput paper soles in shoes in my day. It is evident that instead ofprosecuting them for rascals we should have revered them as unconsciousprophets. But, for that matter, how do you prepare soles of paper thatwill last?"

  "There are plenty of solutions which will make paper as hard as iron."

  "And do not these shoes leak in winter?"

  "We have different kinds for different weathers. All are seamless, andthe wet-weather sort are coated outside with a lacquer impervious tomoisture."

  "That means, I suppose, that rubbers too as articles of wear have beensent to the museum?"

  "We use rubber, but not for wear. Our waterproof paper is much lighterand better every way."

  "After all this it is easy to believe that your hats and caps are alsopaper-made."

  "And so they are to a great extent," said Edith; "the heavy headgear thatmade your men bald ours would not endure. We want as little as possibleon our heads, and that as light as may be."

  "Go on!" I exclaimed. "I suppose I am next to be told that the deliciousbut mysterious articles of food which come by the pneumatic carrier fromthe restaurant or are served there are likewise made out of paper.Proceed--I am prepared to believe it!"

  "Not quite so bad as that," laughed my companion, "but really the nextthing to it, for the dishes you eat them from are made of paper. Thecrash of crockery and glass, which seems to have been a sort of runningaccompaniment to housekeeping in your day, is no more heard in the land.Our dishes and kettles for eating or cooking, when they need cleaning arethrown away, or rather, as in the case of all these rejected materials Ihave spoken of, sent back to the factories to be reduced again to pulpand made over into other forms."

  "But you certainly do not use paper kettles? Fire will still burn, Ifancy, although you seem to have changed most of the other rules we wentby."

  "Fire will still burn, indeed, but the electrical heat has been adoptedfor cooking as well as for all other purposes. We no longer heat our
vessels from without but from within, and the consequence is that we doour cooking in paper vessels on wooden stoves, even as the savages usedto do it in birch-bark vessels with hot stones, for, so the philosopherssay, history repeats itself in an ever-ascending spiral."

  And now Edith began to laugh at my perplexed expression. She declaredthat it was clear my credulity had been taxed with these accounts ofmodern novelties about as far as it would be prudent to try it withoutfurnishing some further evidence of the truth of the statements she hadmade. She proposed accordingly, for the balance of the morning, a visitto some of the great paper-process factories.