Evening Star Newspaper, December 9, 1923, Page 91

ests to America Return to Mannish | 8ACQUE SUIT FOR MORNING HOURS, BUILT OF WOOL VELOUR, IN DEEP BEIGE. THE JACKET IS CUT LIKE A MAN'S TWEED COAT, WITH LOW DOUBLE-BREASTED FASTENING AND HIP POCKET! CARPENTER. PRAGUE. AKE a scat with me in one of | the big Prague automobiles of the state department of Czecho- slovakla for a ride across the ‘fertile plains of Bohemia. Our car ‘was made in the Prague factories. It 1s a big, seven-passenger touring ma- chine, and, although it has only four cylinders, it can easily make fifty miles and upward per hour. Our chauffeur {s a Czech, and, like his class, he is full of enthusiasm for the new nation and everything in it He wants to show that his “Praha” is the equal of any automobile made in America, and like Jehu, the son of| Nimshi, he driveth furlously. We leave the Palace Hotel in the heart of the city, fly down the wide avenue over the Belgian block pavements, carefully directed by the uniformed, helmeted traffic policemen, turn into the Graben and go past the huge Powder Tower. We cross Market Bquare with its bronge statue of John Huss and drive over the river Moldau on ona of its seven stone bridges. We next pass ofl mills, locomotive works, electric lamp factories and other In- dustrial establishments, and soon find ourselves in the country, The road is macadamized and as smooth as a floor. It is lined on both #ides with fruit trees, which extend on and on until they come to a point. On both sides of us reaching to the horizon are the vast plains of fat crops which the men and women are harvesting, and everywhere the farm- ers are working. Tpe flelds have no fences; there are no haystacks or barns or other buildings alone on the landscape. The feople live in vil- lages of one and a half story houses, and we run through a town at every faw mliles. : How the wind blows! It is now “dog days” in Amerrica, and here the sun shines. But the plercing blasts are like those.at the prow of a steam- er when it strikes a fitty-mile storm. Our car is golng like a lightning ex- press, and the cold air flies like a whistling corkscrew right through my bones. I have on ah overcoat, a sweater and two suits of undercloth- ing and am still none too warm. But see, Jan ls slowing the speed of the automobile. We are at the edge of a village, and there is a great slgn by the roadside that we must ow down to six kilometers, or about four miles, an hour. The contrast is sueh that we seem to be crawling, ond 8 B well we are crawling, for @therwise our goose might be cooked fn more ways than one. There are flecks of geese everywhere, each herded by a bare-legged girl, who looks angrily after the machine as we send them flying this way and that. The geese are white and so big that when served at the res- taurants the portions are like chops and steaks. The geese themselves are quite as independent as the citi- sens of this new republic, and a hrill hiss of protest comes from their wide open bills as we crowd them to the aide of the road. Geese are a part of the live stock of Bo- hemia. They are raised by the mil- , lions, and'every farm and every house has its flock. They form a character- istic feature of every half mile of our journey. * % ¥ WWE make notes of the village as we go through. It is different from any town of the same sise in America. The houses are of one and one-half stories, flush with the street. They have walls of yellow stucco and thelr red tiled roofs overhans. The doors and windows are amsll and are painted pale green. The windows of the attics are not bigger than a gheet of note paper. In town thére are no sidewalks, and the gutter runs right along in front of the door steps. Other villages have somewhat better roadways, but none has any sidewalks to apeak of. “THE BOHEMIANS ARE MOST DEVOUT, AND WAYSIDE SHRINES ARE FOUND EVERY-. EVERY gfl“‘. NEARLY ME ALSO HAS A PRIVATE SHRINE." 2 NE can do anything with a By ANNE RITTENHOUSE., tailored suit by treating it right. It deserves distinc- tion which it rarely gets. We act as though it were a poor re- lation to the richer gowns in the It is given any kind of & any hat will do for the old- est shoes are worn with it; it goes about in the rain and snow, while better | frocks hang in muslin bags awaliting formal occasions, motor cars and sun- shine. All this s to be changed. France brought to our attentlon th shabby treatment we have given this kind of dress, which, above all others, is supposedly 100 per cent American. Just as Paris has shown the Lon- doner what a very alluring and friy- olous thing an umbrella can be, in- stead of an ugly, aerviceable, rainy- day thing that one hated to carry, he s trying to prove to America that er OWn type of costume is more than a passably g thing; that it has dash, charm, style.. Therefore it has & new incarnation. It is glven a chance to play a larger role than it has done for veral years. Days were when |t ried an ornamental blouse after we had graduated, from -the fash shirt walst. Such days have returned, but, curl- ously enough, not through the French influence. It appears that there will be a wide dlvergence between the Parls and the New York manner. We intend to widen the scope of the coat and skirt, including it among the costumes that are not limited to one kind of us 5 The overblouse makes this poasible. Its glories and attractions are too tempting to limit it to the.separate skirt or to hide ita light under a coat. Let the rule be what It may concern- ing a lady removing her coat in pub- lic to appear in shirt sleeves, ahe will break it. Once she was still & lady even though she took off her coat in the very eye and teeth of the publtc. It she wears an expensive and colorful overblouse, be it of printed Indian silk, gold-embroidered crepe de chine, sflver tissue with colored monogram, Persian brocade, she In- tends to show it. A fig for what con- stituten a lady. She s right. The fit and finish of the overblouse make her right. When the jacket is removed she appears in an excellent semblance of & one-plece frock. It Is only under these conditions that the coat comes off. With a tucked.in shirt walst of wash silk, with an embroidered dim- ity sport walst, the jacket stays on. Realizing these rules, every woman tries to make the overblouse do its tull duty by taking on the coloration of the sult. e I'l' is permissible to imitate a tai- lored suit with a one-plece frock that carries the brilliancy of an over- blouse as its top portion, but the newer idea is mot to do this. It is the incoming of the genuine tallored suit, not its imitations, that makes for news. We have had much of the so-called three-plece suits. We like a bit more varfety. It Is rather stim- ulating to put on a different kind of walst for various hours and oppor- tunities. This is easlly done with the present three-quarter coat, sometimes em- bellished with peitry at its hem, ce: tainly at {ta neck and wrists, which glives It somewhat the air of a protec- tive wrap. It might be a top coat — THE | el Insigt upon being different from théir -women. Such insurgent indi- vid nip the underarm seam into the tense of a curve and flare the hip part of the jacket Into a faint suggestion of crinoline. There is no doubt that both these features of hion will obtrude themselves upon Masculine is the coat, feminine are 5| the' accessories, is the creed. France - —————— 13\ NEW KIND OF TAILORED SUIT FROM PARIS, WHICH HAS A COAT FASHIONED ON THE LINES OF A MAN'S JACKET FOR THE MORNING. IT HAS A SHORT SKIRT WITHOUT ORNAMEN. TATION, THE J. VERS, ALSO ACKET HAS LONG MANNISH SLEEVES AND RE- POCKETS. A WHITE “MODESTY PIECE” SHOWS IN THE OPENING AS SUBSTITU' FOR BLOUSE. A WHITE GARDENIA IS IN THE LAPEL. INITIALS IN SILVER ARE AP- PLIED TO THE UPPER POCKET. cut short for reasons of welght and convenlence. The iIncoming short jacket, however, presents more of a Dproblera. It will cause some wrink- ling of the brow. This newer garment has nothing of the well-worn jumper jacket in its make-up. It stirs the memory of those who ence wore covert cloth jackets with separate skirts of dark blue serge and mannish shirta of striped madras or wash China silk. | Queer Features of Life Seen on Motor Tour of Czechoslovakia BY FRANK G. Those were times when women had walsts and wore corsets and were proud of both! caring naught that curving hips swelled outward. Wil | copfed the present jacket from the loose lounging coat worn by the men of__that nation. Jta uridérarm geams are plumb from #houlder to hem, its armholes are sme}l arfd imugly fitted high into the ‘armpits, the lapels and collar are S “known accessories to men's | coala, there-are three buttons above the Wraiat ‘or three below it, and real pockets are placed at each side, one at the breast. With" such’ a jaunty jacket goes thé most severe skirt, almost too nar- row to step ip, short enough to show a goodly portion of the transparent Btocking In a light color, swung to & camisole top as a rule, unless one 1s afraid to cut off all chance of wear- ln‘! & tuck-in shirt walst. It is often made_of black or rust velvet, a ma- terial that was not considered proper for the walking suit In other times, I but_ rio one pays attention to creed and code of the preceding genera- tions. . Pearls were once kept for gala occasions, but now they are worn to busipess, which is a striking example pof what not to do, but what every cne does. Patent pumps with “Im- mense silver buckles placed ‘below stockings that closely resemble flesh are as frequent on highways and by- ways as were black Jisle. and sturdy boots in less capricious days. * kX % THERE 18 another kind of tailored costume. which Is beginning to serve all ages for the morning hours. It 1s what we were accustomed to wear when the masculine suit was the national uniform. The fabrics chosen are soft and flexible, dark or 1ight, of sturdy tweed or homespun. Fur s usually omitted. The skirt is of the prevailing type, which Is pre-war in its simplicity and abbreviation. The loose sacque coat has narrow shoulders, long sleeves with buttons at wrist, two hip pockets and no belt. Remember, there are no belts with any suit. That accessory is laid on the shelf. With such a suit goes a crepe de chine blouse with square neck and long sleeves, trimmed with rows of openwork; that is, if one Is conven- tional. But If one accepts new things quickly, the cholce is a striped tub silk with turnover collar and waist- length cravat of the fabric, or of silk to match the colored stripe. No one attempts to add servicea- ble Oxford tles to such masculine severity. The ornate type of Egyp- tian sandal is chosen, possessing such thickness that Cleopatra would have sent them to the backwoods, if there had been such in Egypt. Brown, the American Indian brown, is the leather for the street, matched with Indian stockings, which are preferred to the color known as “nude" this season. No doubt we shall see more of ‘the such figures arrive with the revival | Curved jacket as the warm weather of the jackets? change too Hardly. qulckly for figures walsts are not under control these days. Furthermore, these jackets of the near future are cut on straight underarm lines, except by those who Fashlons | #pproaches. to|vancing the style now. change with them. Diaphragms and | | The extremists are ad- The lines of the body are rather closely followed, glving the woman with a moderately small walst the chance to explolt it. The hip part is short and slightly flaring, the sleeves are long and Farm Village and Farm Home Are Characteristic Developments of the. New Republic. Women’s Work and Wages in This Important European Nation — Co-Operative Movements and the Consumers’ Societies<Land Reform and the Division of the Big Estates Which Had Developed Previous to the World War—Snapshots of the Bohemia of Today. The gardens and stables are back of the houses with the manure often lying between. The only flowers we seo are those in the windows, where boxes hold a blossom or so. The water supply !s chiefly from wells or from the streams where we & women kneeling down and washing their clothes. In some quite large towns, like Podebrady, the water comes from a fountain In the pub- llo square and the servant maids came and ladle it out with basins into huge wooden buckets, which they carry through the atrests on their 1 photographed a boobed- haired blue-eyed girl who was carry- ing water this way. She took five gallons or more at a load and laughed at me as the camera snapped. g In the center of the village is the church, It has a great tower with & cross on the top and there is a clock set into the walls. I venture Bohemia has more town clocks than any other land in central Europe. They are often as big as a cart- wheel, and the hands and the hours are painted with gold, Almost every steeple has its oross, and nearly every house has ita shrine. The are crosses also out In the coun- try where one may kneel and pray by the side of the road. The Bohe- mians have always been very religi- ous, and unt!l the end of the world war, Roman Catholiclsm was almost by force the falth of the country. Since then a wave of Protestanism and Agnosticism has swept over the land and a National Church, which partakes of the Catholic and Greek Orthodox, has many adherents. Now we are again in the country, fiying along between the fruit trees, our horn honking ltke a steam whistle to keep the road clear. There is plenty of trafiic, and ev where the old kioks the heels of the new. We pass heavy teams of draught horses, haullpg loads of two or three tona. The Roréss wear high collars trimmed with brass, and end. ing in a leather hern which rises high over the shoulders. The wag: ons are like those of Russia, much like the boats with which we haul wood at home. They are high up on wheels, and both single and double teams- work with a tongue. When one horse is used he ts hitched to on side of the tongue, and the singl tree at the back holds the two tugs. There are many ox-carts and wag- ons drawn by white-faced cattle, and with them now and then a huge motor truck comes plugging along. 1 saw one ox-cart dragging am air- plane on wheels. The lighter tramo s carried by t pushing wheelbarrows of bricks, hay | ralsing more than 9,000,000,000 and grain; and women going along | pounds per annum or an average of ‘with great baskets of frult and even nine tons per acre. grass on their backs. The women the country I saw no weeds. draw carts, and everywhere we see | fiolds are close together with no vis- | The that woman has the right to hold jhle boundaries and the whole land her own place with the man in this is g crazy quilt of richness, country. ) Indeed, the scenes everywhere re- mind me of the old song: “Oh! the women do the work, do the work, do the work, And the men they just lie around.” * ok k% TH!S is' perhaps a little unjust to the men, for the two sexes labor together, but the ma boss, and, like the bosses el he does little besides. .I have yet to gsee a gang of women digging or hoeing or pulling up beets where a man did not stand and speed up the labor; and I have yet to see a job which {s too heavy for the women. I venture there are four or more women for every man in the flelds. As to conditions, the only difference is in the wages, the women receiv- ing considerably less than the men. There is a nominal eight-hour day for farm labor, but this s arranged #0 that It means so many thousand hours a year and the farmers and thelr men can divide it In such periods as they please. The regular farm hand can be made to work 2340 hours In the year, so that he is bound to put in his .eight hours every day and then some, 50 as-to make up for the periods of cold and Taln. The women are now receiving $ cents an hour, and I ture some of them make as much as 30 or 40 cents In one day. For the youns girls it is all right. but it must be hard for the women of sixty as the day nears its close. I see such women at labor when the sun’ rises and again at 8 In_the evening when it is just geing down. They work hard and seem to enjoy it. These - farm women seem healthy and happy. The young ones are pret- ty, and with their heads wrapped in red handkerchiefs and bright .colored walats, short akirts and bare legs they attract the eye. They are straight ss the rake handies they u | for business. These people mix their muscle with brains and they educate their brains Bohemia had agricul- tural chairs in its universities even while we were fighting the War of 1512 with the British. Ten years be- fore our civil war began the first tarmer school was established at Ra- bin, and there are now scores of farm schools, summer and winter, all over the country. The winter courses are five months in length. There are | agricultural high schools and univer- sities. There 1s one at Tabor whose course is three years, and one here at Prague which has a course of four years. There are experimental sta- tions, and new farm schools are being in the hay flelds and graceful withal. |- The farming is good everywhere. Every aquare foot of land is under. cultivation and the crops on theaver- are larger than ours. The wheat yleld, for instance, is about twenty- seven bushels per acre and the oats vield thirty-six. These peopla raise thirty-five bushels of rye per acre and about thirty bushels of summer barley. Their average potato grop is ninety bushéls, and they have a mil- lion and & half acres of tubers. The oorn erop is lower thas ours, but im, sugar boots they :»l.uy wurpass us, In riding over| establighed where. in Slovakia and else- * %k % 'HE land is farmed sclentifically. Every bit of manure is saved. ! Every farm 1 have visited, small and large, has its cistern under the stable and the hdérses, cattle and hogs stand on concrete floors which drain into the cisterns from which the liquid and washings are afterward pumped into tank wagons and spread over the fields. The farmsteads are interesting. Take one, for instance, at Opolany, a village of about seven hundred people, where I visited the home of my guide's brother. The farm con- tained 150 acres. It lay on the out- skirts of the village and was cut through by a brook. They were at work In the fields and the man had a half dozen women to help him. He paid them 3 cents an hour and FRONT DECORATED WITH A tight, bone buttons fasten the fronts over the diaphragm, the lapels are snugly cut and fitted. With this jacket goes a modesty plece of chiffon, lace, or muslin and lace. Thé blouse Is omitted. This makes for economy, but no one can remove the coat. It is a necessary part of the costume. The blouse- makers do not want these modesty pleces to be revived, which s natural, but there is room enough in the world for both. Women who are thick in the upper part of the body are well pleased to see them return. |They give a neat and trig line. Strange if we should come back to what was once called “a fine figure of a woman.” There are sufficient suggestions of it just now among the clothes with the Oriental straight line to make the export watch straws. Tub silk frocks have been offered for the warm climes in winter months. Therefore It was natural that plain and plaited shirt walsts of the same tabric should follow. They go with the loose sacque coat and narrow {skirt bullt of homespun or tweed Many of these carry the starched white collar, rather narrow, of the Gibson girl period. The long cravat takes precedence over others. Every- where among the new models there is evidence that collars are to be re- vived. There are white linen shirts with finely plated bosoms to vex the laundress. They have plain sleeves with turnover cuffs and a standing he told me they worked twelve hours every day. My guide sald that the property had been In his family for more generations than he could num- | ber. There were two houses, one occu- pled by his mother and the other by his brother and family. The first was a commodious one-and-a-half-story buflding with a roof of red tiles which overhung the walls of stucco, painted snow-white. The other was of the same height and a combination of home and stables, running from the roadway back a distance of sev- eral hundred feet. The houses extend- ed out to the street, but adjoining the home and practically under the same roof were stable after stable filled with cattle, pigs, horses and goats. Each stable had its own rooms floored rangements for economical feeding. Between the two houses and back of the house of the mother was a large barnyard containing a storehouse for grain. We took coffee with the brother in what was a sort of kitchen and bed- room combined. There was a porce- lain stove in the. corner above which I saw this sign, in Czechoslovakian: “Belleve in the Lord Jesus Christ and the House is Saved.” The house was clean and the barn- yard like a tennis court. The coffee with concrete and fitted with all ar-| INDIAN PRINTED SILK STOCK COLLAR, WORN WITH BLACK TAILORED SUIT FOR THE STREET. THE HAT IS OF SILK PLUSH, WITH MORE OF A BRIM THAN USUAL, THE RIBBON CROWN BAND TIED AT BACK IN A STIFF BOW AND THE SLIDE OF CUT SILVER INITIALS. collar with starch In it. Link cuff- buttgns are revived to play their old part in the scheme of dress. (Copyright, 1928.) Wax for Records. HE carnaubs, or wax palm, hse many com i uses, but its chief value is its production of wax for making phonograph records. The best quality comes from the tenderest leaves. They are cut at three differ- | ent periods during the wax season, | which extends from September to | March. It takes about 2,000 leaves | to make twenty-five to thirty pounds of wa The leaves are dried in the sun and when thoroughly withered are beaten with flalls to remove the | wax. The raw product is melted In | boiling water and strained to remove foreign matter. | 'As to Your Watch. THE rim of the balance wheel of your watch travels about ten | miles a day. Some 2400 operations were required to make the watch, It has about 175 separate pleces. Some of the screws are so small that you would not know they were screws | unless you put them under a micro- | cope. An ordinary thimble will hold 50.000 of these screws. One watch ‘rompmn)‘ makes hairsprings so fine | that they sell them at the rate of | $84,000 a pound. The smallest watch made regularly in the United States | is the size of a di was good and the cherry shortcake in which the cherries were planted, seeds and all, tasted delicious. ing my stay I took snapshots of some of the farm girls, even to a sister and cousin, who came from the village stream in which they had been wad- ing while washing the clothes. Both were good looking, I can assure you, The next farm I stopped at was that of the president of the Agrarian Bank in Prague. The farm is situated about thirty miles from the capital and it contains three or four hundred acres. Here the house faced the barn- yard, although it was a beautiful con- crete structure of two storles and in all respects a most comfortable home. Running out from each side of it a fow feet from the home, were two huge one-story barns or stables, each two hundred feet long. All of the | buildings were roofed with tiles and all were of brick covered with stucco. I went through the stables with the owner and looked at the live stock, all of which is kept up, the grass be- ing cut and fed in the stalls. In one room I was shown some tons of grass ready for feeding. The grass had been chopped fine to aid the di- gestion of the beasts that were to eat it. The horses and cattle were well bred. Among them was a prize bull which looked like a shorthorn. It weighed over 2,000 pounds.” The horses were for driving and heavy draft and the hogs, some of which weighed, almost half a ton, were Yorkshifes and Berkshires. Here the floors were also of concrete and the buildings were lighted by electricity. This farm was especlally interest- ing in that it had been bought by the banker in connection with the land reform which i{s now going on in Czechoslovakia. Before the war a very great part of the country was owned by several hundred aristo- orats, who had inherited large estates from their” ancestors who had taken part in the Czech revolution of 1620. * ok kX AT the time the world war began more than half of all the land In Czechoslovakia was In tracts of 500 to 2,500 acres. There were five hun- dred and twenty-one estates of that size, and two hundred and fifty-five estates of more than twenty-five hun- dred acres. The estates of five thou- sand acres represented about one- fourth of all Bohemia, and at the same time there were about seven hundrd thousand Czechs who had only from one to twelve and a half acres each. ‘When the new republic was formed parliament passed a law to take over these great estates, .paying their owners a fixed price for them, and to distribute them more' evenly and equitably among the people. During this trip through the coun- try I visited some of the co-operative institutions which are to be found all over Bohemia. The co-operative movement started long before the war, and there are now co-operative associations of a half dozen or more different kinds. Some of these are connected with the farmers, some with the laboring men and some with the consumers. (Copyright, 1625, Carpenter's World Tratals.}