Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1875 — The Trade in Hair. [ARTICLE]

The Trade in Hair.

A writer says: The immense expansion of the trade in hair during recent vears is scarcely conceivable. At the beginning of the present century it was considered a disgrace to wear false hair. To-day the detestable fashion has extended even to the most paltry village. As late as the year 1850 one pound of h air cost four francs. Scarcely had the Empress Eugenie attained the imperial dignity than the price rose to eight francs and ten francs per pound. In the year 1865 the fashion grew into an epidemic, and spread beyond the boundaries of France. The German young ladies forsook the national custom of long and beautiful plaits in order, like their French sisters, to burden their heads wit! steeples of hair. In 1866 the price rose to twenty francs, in 1867 to thirty-five francs, in 1868 to forty-five francs and in 1870 to fifty-five francs per pound. This last is the price of “ unprepared” hair; “ prepared” costs double and treble as much. The finest hair comes from the heads of the dead women of Brittany and Auvergne. When, in either of these places, a girl or woman of middle age dies the. hair is cut off and turned into money. The hair of the living, however, fetches a better price, and sometimes blonde maidens receive as much as 1,500 or 2,000 francs for their tresses. Since the war the ladies have moderated their demands and regarded with less favor this hateful fashion, to which the physicians attribute so many nervous disorders and brain fevers. Herb Ttscher says that if one volume of castor oil be dissolved in two or three volumes of spirits of wine, it will render paper transparent, and, the spirit rapidly evaporating, the paper in a few minutes becomes fit for use. A tracing in pencil can then be made, and if the paper is placed in spirits of wine, the oil. is dissolved out* restoring the paper to its original condition. The drawing may then be comnleted in Indian ink or in colors.