“That woman judge down in Birmingham, Ala., has certainly stirred up a lot of talk, hasn’t she?” observed the Bank Clerk to the Soda Jerker by way of starting the usual morning chinfest.
“I haven’t heard anything about it,” said the Soda Jerker.
“Don’t you read the newspapers?” asked the Bank Clerk.
“Sure, I read them about the way most folks read them. I open it up and see what Mutt and Jeff are doing; then I turn over and look at the sport page. I glance at the headlines to see if there are any automobile wrecks or whether it was Aimee McPherson’s or some other woman’s nighties in Armiston’s trunk. That’s about all I get out of a daily newspaper.”
“Well, you missed something,” said the Bank Clerk. “They have a woman judge down in Birmingham named Virginia Henry Mayfield. Judge Mayfield broke into print the other day with the statement that women could help the cotton farmer and save their souls at the same time by wearing more cotton and less silk. Yes sir; the old girl said she was sure that homes would be happier if women wore more cotton hose, cotton bloomers, cotton petticoats and cotton night shirts. She thinks that silk underwear and silk stockings have done more to increase the business of the divorce courts than everything else put together. What do you think about it?”
“I think she’s part right and I think she’s part wrong,” said the Bank Clerk. “I have no doubt that silk teddies and silk hose may help the divorce courts, but when the old girls says that cotton petticoats and cotton night shirts make for contentment in the home, she’s all wrong and I have an idea that she’s suffering from one of those things called an inferiority complex. The trouble with so many homes to-day is that the poor, homely little wives wear cotton bloomers, cotton petticoats and cotton night shirts and when their husbands get out and see a peach of a little thing dolled up in about two ounces of silk, he loses his head to the silk.
“Now if that Alabama lady judge would put cotton hose and cotton bloomers on every little drug store hound on Main Street and put flesh colored silk step-ins on all the plain little wives who stay at home, then there might be more contentment in the home and fewer men falling for the stuff they run into away from home. I’ll say that Leigh Sheep is right: Even a married woman feels better in a silk nightie.”
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Nov. 5, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn83025812/1926-11-05/ed-1/seq-1/
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