"Dress and Sensuality.-There are two ways in which fashionable dress leads to unchastity; viz, 1. By its extravagance; 2. By its abuse of the body. How does extravagance lead to unchasitity? By creating the temptation to sin. It affects not those gorgeously attired ladies who ride in fine carriages, and live in brown-stone fronts, who are surrounded with all the luxuries that wealth can purchase-fine apparel is no temptation to such. But to less favored-though not less worthy-ones, these magnificent displays of millenery goods and fine trappings are most powerful temptations. The poor seamtress, who can earn by diligent toil hardly enough to pay her board bill,, has no legitimate admires. Plainly dressed as she must be if she remains honest and retains her virtue, she is scornfully ignored by her proud sisters. Everywhere she finds it a generally recognized fact that “dress makes the lady.” On the street, no one steps aside to let her pass, no one stoops to regain for her the package that slips from her weary hands. Does she enter a crowded car, no one offers her a seat, though she is trembling with fatigue, while the showily dressed woman who follows her is accommodated at once. She marks the difference ; she does not pause to count the chost, but barters away her self-respect, go gain the respect, or deference, of strangers."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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pp.190-191

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg