Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 June 1884 — Broadcloth an Enemy of Health. [ARTICLE]

Broadcloth an Enemy of Health.

Professor Hamilton, in an address on hygiene, denounced broadcloth as an enemy to- exercise, and therefore to health. He says: “American gentlemen have adopted, as a national costume, a thin, tightfitting black suit of broadcleth. To foreigners- we seem always ts- be in mourning; we travel in black. The priest, the lawyer, the doctor, the literary man, the mechanic, and even the day-laborer, choose always the same black broadcloth, —a style that never ought to have been adopted out of the drawing-room or the pulpit, because it is a feeble and expensive fabric, and be- : cause it ie at the North no protection • against the cold, nor is it any more suitable at the Sr#uth. It is too thin to be warm in winter, and too black to be cool in summer; but especially do we object to.it because the wearers-is always soiling it by exposure. Young gentlemen will not play ball), pitch quoits, or- wrestle, or tumble, or any other similar thing, lest their broadcloth should be offended. They will not go out into the storm, because the- broadcloth will lose its luster if rain falls upon it; they will not run, because they have no confidence in the strength of their broadcloth; they dare not mount a horse or leap a fence, because broadcloth, as everybody knows, is-so faithless. So these young men and these olden- men, these merchants, mechanics, and all, learn to walk, talk. and think soberly and carefully; they seldom venture; even to laugh to the full) extent of theur sides, because of their broadcloth.”