Women's Patriotic Association for Diminishing the Use of Imported Luxuries

6 higher and higher ? And is it true that this is only another way of saying that our own currency is as steadily depreciating ? If all this is so, and if it ought not to be so, is there anything we women can do about it? Wiser heads were consulted, men who had made the subject a study, men to whom the nation looked to guide it safely through financial difficulties. There was but one answer. It is true; you are right; and you can help us and the country most materially. The most effectual way of doing this, we are told, is to diminish our use of foreign luxuries, although a general economy in all superfluities will do much towards it. At present our imports—or the articles purchased by us from foreign countries—are very much greater in value than our exports—or the articles we produce at home and sell abroad. It is estimated that when the accounts for the year are made up, on the 30th day of this coming J une, we shall find that the country has been sending abroad seventy or seventy-five millions of dollars in gold to pay the balance of trade against it. And what have we bought with this money, so much needed at home just now, and which might be dispensed with ? Silks, satins, velvets, laces, jewelry, ribbons, trimmings, carpets, mirrors, and other imported luxuries—every woman knows what they are without running through the whole list—things that are not necessary, which would benefit our country should we do without them altogether, but which, if wanted, can, with but few exceptions, be obtained of oui’ own manufacture. We do not wish to cut off all importations, for many of these are necessary to our welfare and comfort, but we do aim at reducing our imports until they are at least even with our exports, thus raising the standard of our own depreciated currency, and, by keeping the gold in the country, enabling us to meet the expenses of the present war with greater ease. When the war broke out we all thought we should be ruined, and we instinctively economized — the statistics, as given by Prof. Hitchcock in his eloquent address at the large meeting at the Cooper Union, show with what good result—but the following- year we began to indulge ourselves again, men as well as

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