UNEMPLOYMENT, LUXURY, AND nib PLUMAGE TRADE. •
(To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR.")
Sta,—The fact that the Plumage Bill is once again practical politics, awing to the opening of the autumn session of
Parliament, will, hope, serve as an excuse for my again returning to the subject. It is probable that, even if the miners' strike reaches an early settlement, unemployment will be acute throughout the winter. If the Plumage Bill can be pushed through its remaining stages before Christmas, we are assured by the Drapers' Organizer that a considerable development of the home industry in continuing flower, ribbon, and berry decorations, in dressing poultry feathers, &c., will be the result.- Sir Charles Hobhouse has told us that the plumage trade is largely in the hands of foreigners who come over to England from Friday to Monday, buy up the stocks, and take them abroact to be made up, and it is most desirable for purely economic reasons-that this should cease. In the next place and in view of the riot which took- place recently, the fires of class hatred are not damped- down by the spectacle of fashionable women.. covered with highly prized plumes like savages in the West End. It has lately been declared fashion- able to wear wings on the ankles at dances, and never have the streets been worse in wanton and barbaric ostentation, par- ticularly of Jewish women, than this- autumn. The wild expenditure on the wings (made fashionable this season) and bridal ornaments of beautiful and useful birds is the worst kind of waste and frivolity in these straitened and dangerous times. How much longer are we to wait before this national scandal, with its appalling background of cruelty and mas-
sacre, is removed P—I am, Sir, &c., H. J. MaggiNogam, Plumage Bill Group.
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