Editor Endorses Overall Movement, April 17, 2910

From the April 17, 1920 issue of the Hickory Daily Times

On Beat High Costs

The overall movement, born as a protest against the high cost of clothing, and accepted as a joke in many places later, has made an impression on the minds of thousands of people and is destined yet to help in the problem of lowering living costs. As a symbol of the simple life, of frugality, work and thrift, thong can beat the overall. It is an expression of honesty, of the simple life that was. It carries one back to the day when all of us owned overalls and were not ashamed to wear them when one Sunday suit showed that one had clothes. Those were good days, too.

If the overall movement can help in bringing the people back to a realization that fine clothes do not make fine fellows, and that thrift and saving are much more to be desired than much gasoline—not to say fine raiment—then we are for it. Our merchants, interested in the welfare of the public, have realized that prices are too high and they know that only by careful and close buying can the people get ahead in these days. And if we were half as careful in our purchases as we were 10 years ago, the whole country would be immensely better off.

We observe a tendency among the ladies to work over last year’s hats. Those who do this probably will be marked, but they can afford it a little later. Some one has suggested—and we can call his name—that the ladies wear cotton hosiery on week days and silk stockings on Sunday to church. This man, though the sun of his meridian is not as bright as it was five years ago, still likes silk stockings—and we don’t mind saying that so do we.

In adopting the overall movement one need not necessarily wear out more rubber tires. We are of the opinion that shoe leather is cheaper than automobiles and gasoline, and, if necessary one can wear sandals if he does not like our barefoot club idea.

We are not anxious to put anybody out of business, of course, but the country has gone wild not so much on any particular thing as riotous living. We need to return to our senses.