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

9 We publish the following extracts, from the prominent newspapers of the day, to show the origin and progress of the movement in this city. [From the N. Y. Tribune, May 14.] A PUBLIC MEETING WILL.BE HELD AT THE COOPER UNION, ON MONDAY, MAY 16, AT ONE O’CLOCK. The object of the meeting is to call the attention of women to the injury inflicted upon the country, in this crisis, by the extravagant purchase of imported luxuries, such as silks, satins, velvets, jewelry, feathers, mirrors, and objects of vertu, and to suggest to their consideration the propriety of abstaining from such articles of foreign manufacture until the present unhappy crisis shall have passed. It is not proposed to recommend the abandonment of any articles necessary for comfort, but simply, that the above named luxuries, whose import creates the necessity of sending enormous amounts of gold out of the country, should, for the present, cease to be matters of daily use and purchase; and thus, the gold should be retained at home, to strengthen our own Government. Elsewhere this movement has been already suggested; women, who have devoted themselves to the service of their country’s defenders, have paused, in the midst of labor and suffering, to ask, Is there nothing more to be done 1 and they have been taught that a mightier help than any they have yet given may be rendered by simple self-denial in outward adorning. Can a right-thinking, patriotic woman hesitate to make so paltry a sacrifice ? The Executive Committee of the Metropolitan Fair have been urged to take the initiative in this movement, and being fully persuaded of its utility, and anxious to forward it by any

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