Monthly Archives: August 2006

Bungalow Resources for Restorers or Builders

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BRICK BUNGALOWBungalow means different things to different people so I’m not going to try and define it. Henry Saylor back in 1926 described the Bengalese bungalow from which the california bungalow was derived – “A low, rambling mass, with wide verandas, overhanging eaves, floors of stone or concrete and single-story construction, are the characteristics of the true Indian bungalow. There is never a second story, never dormer windows to break the long simple roof planes that appear to come down, particularly at the ends or corners, nearly to the ground.”

Bungalows are a big favorite of mine. I live in an area that was built up in the 1920′s so the surrounding suburbs are full of beautiful california style bungalows which are just as popular here in Australia as they are in California. In Adelaide, South Australia the more upmarket bungalows are referred to as “Gentleman’s Bungalows” and were mostly constructed of brick, due to a shortage of timber.

Bungalows are laden with character and individuality which makes them popular with restorers today. This comprehensive list of resources will be of use to anyone looking to build or restore a bungalow, or even those who are just fans.

Bungalow Blogs and Forums
 1921 Bungalow
Charts the progress of an improving home. [ATOM]
1921bungalow.blogspot.com/     

Battle Creek Bungalow
Ongoing saga of a couple working on their house. [ATOM]
battlecreekbungalow.blogspot.com/

Bungalo Beauty
Documenting renovation work as it is done on a Chicago style bungalow. [ATOM]
bungalowbeauty.blogspot.com/

North Caddo House
Insights into the restoration of a 1930 bungalow. [ATOM]
northcaddohouse.blogspot.com/

StuccoHouse
The ups and downs of restoring a 1924 bungalow. [ATOM]
stuccohouse.blogspot.com/

American Bungalow Forum
Welcome to the American Bungalow Forum
americanbungalowmagazine.com

1928 Bungalow Restoration
Follow us as we journal the improvements we’re making to our 1928 bungalow home.
irvingtonbungalow.blogspot.com/

 

Lower Immigration Causes Labor Shortage

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IN 1925 NEARLY 17,000 MORE COMMON LABORERS left the United States than came into the country during ten months’ operation of the new 2 per cent. quota immigration law, according to an analysis made by the National Industrial Conference Board, and a recent report of the immigration committee of the National Association of Manufacturers cites the diminishing supply of unskilled laborers as “a fundamental defect in the legislation.” The executive secretary of the American Engineering Council, estimating a reduction of 800,000 workers a year as compared with years before the war, insists that the loss can only be made up by improved management which will reduce the waste of human labor.

While the Industrial Conference Board first calls attention to the deficit in raw-labor supply, it points out that the ultimate effect of the new quota law can not be determined at this time. The Board concludes, however, that “the scaling down of immigration to about a fifth of what it was before the war has the immediate effect of stabilizing the growth of our population, with the attending result of a sustained high-wage level.” With actual money wages averaging 116 per cent. above what they were before the war, with the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar, and assuming the pre-war standard of living, the Board figures that “the wage-earner is about 30 per cent. better off, as regards ‘real’ wages, than he was at the peak of the wage level of 1920.” For the ten months from July, 1924, to April, 1925, since the new law reducing quotas from 3 per cent. to 2 per cent. went into effect, the figures are given as follows:

  “Common laborers admitted were 27,908, as against 97,886 during the same period a year previous; but 44,750 of that class left the country during the same time, leaving an actual deficit of 16,842.
  “Net immigration of all classes shows a decrease of 71.4 per cent. as against the corresponding period the year before. A total of 242,965 persons were admitted, as against 637,602 during the same period the year previous, showing a decline of 62 per cent. in total immigration. In the same period, 78,578 departed, as compared to 63,324 a year ago, leaving a net immigration during the last ten months of 164,387, as against 574,278 during the corresponding ten months in the year prior to the new quota law.
  “Of the 242,965 admitted, 13,352 were farm laborers; of this class, only 1,232 left the country during the same period, leaving a net gain of 12,120 of farm laborers. Others admitted were: professional people, 8,809, while 1,665 emigrated; skilled labor 41,716, of which class 7,171 left; miscellaneous occupations, 40,204 were admitted, 6,367 of this class leaving; no occupation, including women and children, 98,927 came in, and 17,262 departed.”

“Even in prosperity we are losing the aliens who do our dirty work,” comments the New York World, which remarks that it was not expected that the law would shut off a foreign supply of unskilled labor. It works out that poor wage-earners used to come singly, hoping to earn enough to send for wife or relatives, while now the unnaturalized Greek, for example, who sees Greece’s quota of 8% persons a month filled far in advance with “preferred class” persons, gives up and goes home. If the immigration law is retained unchanged, continues The World, one consequence is evident:

“This nation must furnish its own native labor tor the rough work of field, mine and factory. Machines can not completely take the place of muscle. The social results should show many of the beneficial results produced by a like situation in Australasia. An easily exploited, roughly handled mass of ignorant foreign workers may have meant much to industrial prosperity, but it meant endless evils also. Native-born labor will not work for 40 cents an hour, twelve hours a day, as much steel labor did before public sentiment compelled a reform. It will insist upon some of that dignity for manual effort which observers just after the Civil War noted was being undermined by cheap foreign labor.”

Lower Immigration continued here…

Immigration Stream Drying Up

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FOR THE FIRST TIME in our immigration history we lost, in the fiscal year which ended June 30, 1925 more unskilled workers than we gained. Six European countries failed to fill their allotted quotas, and sixteen received back from the United States more of their own nationals than emigrated to this country.

Is this striking evidence of improving economic conditions in Europe, or are we getting unpopular? What is happening to immigration? The conclusion of the Indianapolis Star is that the present Immigration Law, which limits immigration, with certain exceptions, to 2 per cent. of the number of foreign-born from the same country who were living in the United States in 1890, “has not only checked the influx of aliens, but it has done so to a much greater degree than was expected.” The fact that natives of practically all the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe returned home in larger numbers than they arrived is evidence to the Providence Journal that “the aims of the sponsors of the law have been achieved.”

But what of the economic import of these statistics? “This aspect deserves serious thought,” believes the St. Paul Dispatch, “particularly at a time of increasing prosperity and growing need of labor.” Manufacturers and other employers, observes the Manchester Union, “say the greatest immigration problem just now is not too much immigration, but too little.” This leads the New Orleans Times-Picayune to predict that “the clamor against our restrictive law may be renewed at the coming session of Congress,” while to the New York Journal of Commerce:

  “Figures for the first full year of the operation of the existing Immigration Law, particularly when coupled with the rather evident intention of the American Federation of Labor to go to further lengths if it can in excluding foreign labor, certainly suggest some very real dangers. The pertinent facts are: Total incoming aliens, 294,314; total departures, 92,728; leaving a net influx of aliens of 201,586. Net inflow of 42,422 skilled laborers, as compared with 143,616 during the preceding year. Net farm-labor immigration 14,762, as compared with 27,233 during the year before. Net loss in unskilled laborers 15,106, as compared with a gain of 70,742 during the previous twelve months. There was a substantial net outflow of peoples to South and Southeastern Europe, including departures to Italy of nearly 21,000. Some 130,193 persons over and above departures came in from Mexico and Canada, nearly two-thirds of the total net inflow of aliens.
  “The law as it stands has put an end to the additions to our labor force that used to come from Italy and other southern and southeastern European countries, and has for the most part turned the tide in the other direction. That, of course, is what the unions have wanted all along and, needless to say, they are not in the least disturbed by it. They are, however, distinctly disquieted by the increasing number of aliens coming in from Mexico. These workmen are without high standards of living, and if they become numerous enough could without much doubt become, if indeed they have not on occasion already become, a thorn in the side of union officials, who are ever striving for higher money wages, quite regardless of the economic consequences to the men or to the nation at large.
  “But to the dispassionate observer of the course of economic events the interesting question is what will be the ultimate effect upon the nation’s business of this policy of alien exclusion, evidently with us to stay for an indefinite period? The question is not one that admits of a categorical answer, particularly in detail. It is clear, however, that it can not fail to make permanent high money wages, shorter hours of work and the like, all of which tend very definitely to hold us on a basis of inflation and thus to hurt the volume of business, particularly in foreign trade.”

Immigration Stream Drying Up continued here…

Movie Star Salaries Reduced – 1927

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CUTTING MOVIE SALARIES, perhaps 25 per cent., creates a universal sensation, because through the films everybody seems to be personally acquainted with movie stars.

Similar cuts in salaries of the officers of producing companies, say down to $150,000 a year for presidents, attract some- what less attention, altho that is part of the policy of retrenchment announced by the Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky and fifteen other leading companies. Is such cutting down a good sign of the times? Yes, indeed, in substance answer most of our daily papers, both as an indication of a degree of financial sanity coming into a frenzied business and as a check on ultra-dazzling screen stars. Others, less optimistic, suggest that there is more of making a virtue out of necessity in this gesture of economy than there is promise of benefit to the picture-seeing multitudes. Allowing for “wee bits of exaggeration” regarding salaries actually paid in the fabulous movie world, still, as the Pittsburgh Gazette Times points out, “the warning given of the state of the industry, coupled with the demand for reduced expenditures, indicates that the business is passing from the bubble period and is settling down on a basis akin to that which governs in other industries, one in which there must be care that the outgo shall not exceed the income.” But more than mere business considerations are involved, in the opinion of The Ohio State Journal (Columbus), which says,

“There has been no real economic justification for millionaire incomes in the movies save the keen competition among the producers themselves. The lure of apparently easy money has drawn thousands of men and girls, especially the latter, to the movie centers, has made them discontented when they did not succeed, and spoiled them for what might have been more productive lives. There is evidence at last that the industry itself sees the handwriting on the wall. But the sad part is that it is economic pressure rather than a realization of the essential unsoundness of its position that has forced the issue.”

Hollywood sends out news that the cut will amount possibly to $10,000,000 a year, hitting salaries of an estimated army of 300,000 people, including executives, department heads, producers, stars, directors, actors, writers, and other artists. High salaried “big chiefs” voluntarily accept the maximum cut of 25 per cent. as a starter; stars under contract are to be asked to accept like reductions; other outs range down to 10 per cent.;

$50-a-week employees are exempt. Since recent huge mergers of theater chains have put the movie industry in control of approximately three-fourths of the whole country’s film outlets, these theaters are expected to be subject to the economy rule as well as the scattered executive and distribution offices. Hollywood also reports mass meetings of resentful actors, hints of compromise if a crisis “really exists,” and hoped-for help from the Actors’ Equity Association in a “film wage war.” Officials of the Actors’ Equity in New York point out that Los Angeles “is the greatest non-union town in the country,” and Hollywood stars have heretofore preferred to “go along with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a company union nicely drest up by the big producers.”

Movie Star Salaries continued here

Racial Segregation Laws challenged – 1927

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NO LAWS MAY PART WHITE AND BLACK – ALL segregation laws, keeping white people out of negro residence sections and negroes out of white sections, are unconstitutional, says the Supreme Court for the second time. Such laws violate the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal civil rights to persons of all races. Very well, comes the answer from the press of the South, we will drop segregation laws, but keep on segregating the races.

OF COURSE, nobody can compel white people and colored people to be neighbors—and now the Supreme Court comes along to say that no State or city can legally keep them apart. That is, the segregation ordinances and laws that have been passed in recent years, particularly in the South, are invalidated by the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal rights to all races. Taking this decision together with the one the week before which voided the Texas law barring negroes from Democratic primaries, the New York Evening World sees the Southern people “coming in for considerable lashing in the Supreme Court of the United States.” And in Louisiana, the State whose segregation laws have just been hit so hard, one daily paper declares that the decision “will meet with universal disapproval by the white people, not only of New Orleans and Louisiana, but the entire South.” However, the Louisiana dailies in general accept the decision, insisting that segregation is necessary and will continue as a private policy even if it can not be enforced by law.

A spokesman for the colored race acclaims the outcome of the case as a victory in the “fight against legalized ghettoes.”

It is remarkable to note that the case involving so acute an issue in American life should be settled by the Supreme Court without a word of comment. All the Court had to do was to refer to what it said on a previous occasion. The recent case, which has been pushed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, rose in New Orleans, where a negro planned to rent to negro tenants a house in the white section of the city. A white resident secured an injunction appealing to New Orleans ordinances and Louisiana laws. As the Baltimore Sun’s Washington correspondent explains:

“The ordinances were enacted under a State law passed in 1912 authorizing municipalities to withhold permits for white or negro houses under certain circumstances, and a State law of 1924 prohibiting a white person from establishing a residence in a negro community and a negro from establishing a residence in a white community. The ordinance provides that white persons can not move into a negro neighborhood without the consent of two-thirds of the negroes resident thereof, and vice versa.”

The injunction was therefore upheld by the State Supreme Court. But, as we read in a Washington dispatch to the New York World, “all segregation laws look alike to the Supreme Court.” We are reminded that “in 1917 in the Buchanan-Warley case the Court killed the Louisville law.” And on March 14 Chief Justice Taft simply announced that the judgment of the Louisiana court was reversed on the authority of the 1917 case, which involved a Louisville segregation ordinance. So to give their readers an idea of the Supreme Court’s actual views, the Baltimore Sun quotes from the 1917 decision:

“A city ordinance forbidding colored persons from occupying houses as residences or places of abode or public assembly on blocks where the majority of the houses are occupied by white persons for those purposes, and in like manner prohibiting white persons when the conditions as to occupancy are reversed and which bases the interdiction upon color and nothing more, passes the legitimate bound of police power and invades the civil right to acquire, enjoy and use property, which is guaranteed in equal measure to all citizens, white or colored, by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Racial Segregation Laws continued here

Mellon Tax Reduction Proposals 1927

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Debate over the Mellon Tax Reduction Proposal of 1927

THE BATTLE FOR AND AGAINST heavy tax-reduction, which began November 2, when Secretary of the Treasury Mellon recommended a reduction not greater than $225,000,000, “will be between financial and corporation giants,” observes Robert Barry, Washington correspondent of the New York Evening World. Unlike the 1921, 1924, and 1926 tax-reduction battles, Mr. Average Citizen, who is found in the lower brackets, will gain only indirectly from whatever slashes may result from the Mellon recommendations. He simply is not in the picture this year; the issue is not whether there shall be relief for the small income-tax payer, but what the amount of the reduction in the higher levels shall be.

Basing their argument primarily on the ground that the Treasury has in the past consistently underestimated its revenue, the Democrats, says the Springfield Union, “are virtually united in proposing a total reduction of $400,000,000, or even $500,000,000.” Mr. Mellon’s reply to this is that such a heavy cut would threaten a budget deficit in the fiscal year 1929; that a tax policy must be based, not on past revenues, but on those likely to be available in the future. The Secretary of the Treasury, remarks the New York Sun, “arrives at his figures by simple arithmetic—a science all too unfamiliar in legislative halls.”

Chairman Green, of the House Ways and Means Committee, following the hearings between November 2 and 12, hopes to have the tax-reduction bill ready for introduction with the opening of Congress, and passed by the House before the holidays. What Congress must decide, we are told, is the amount of the cuts which can be made without leaving a deficit. “Curiously enough,” notes the Providence Journal, “the United States Chamber of Commerce has a tax-curtailment program that more closely resembles the Democratic proposals than it does the Administration’s tentative outline.” This outline, as submitted by Secretary Mellon and summarized by the Washington correspondent of the New York Times, contains these five basic recommendations:

“1. Reduction of the corporation tax from 13.5% to 12 per cent., involving a revenue loss of $135,000,000.
“2. Permitting corporations with net income of $25,000 or
less, and with not more than ten stockholders, to file returns
and pay the tax as partnerships or corporations, at their option.
This would mean a reduction of $30,000,000 to $35,000,000.
“3. Readjusting the intermediate brackets of the surtax rates, applying to incomes between $18,000 and $70,000 and involving a revenue loss of $50,000,000.
“4. Repealing the estate tax, involving a loss of $7,000,000.
“5. Exempting from taxation the income from American bankers’ acceptances held by foreign central banks of issue.”

Mellon Tax Proposals continued here

More Millions for Better Roads – 1927

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IT is “cheaper to have good roads” than to go without them, it has been stated in high official circles in Washington, and the Federal Government as well as States and subdivisions are now definitely committed to huge highway expenditures.

More than a billion and a half dollars was spent in this country last year on road-building and maintenance, it is estimated, and touring motorists who have been “detouring” most of the time will readily believe it.  As a result we find a definite stimulus to many lines of industry, including concrete, steel, brick-making, etc., and an important influence on national habits in distribution and transportation. The fall road-building season, writes J. C. Royle in a Consolidated Press dispatch from New York, is now in full swing, and is absorbing a large quantity of itinerant labor released from the harvests. Mr. Royle reminds us that in the public budget, counting local, State and national governments “payments for roads are now exceeded only by expenditures for education and protection of the public peace.” He adds:

In 1906 local governments supplied 96 per cent. of the funds for roads. Today the State governments supply about 37 per cent., the Federal Government 10 per cent., and the local governments 53 per cent. The annual activity in the fall for rehabilitation of old roads and building of new ones is one of the mainstays of several industries, including cement and other building materials.

The cement industry of America has increased tremendously in the last two years. The American industry made 184,000,000 barrels of cement in 1926 and shipped 161,000,000 barrels.  This was about 38,000,000 barrels under actual capacity. From this it can be seen readily how much the fall road-building campaign means to this industry. About 27 per cent. of the total domestic production is used in construction of paving and highways.

The building of highways has changed the trend of many other industries. It has been responsible in part for the development of the automobile trade.  It has altered the marketing of live stock and farm products and the delivery of steel and other manufactured goods. The coming winter is expected to see more highway traffic than ever before, and States and communities are making preparations to keep the main roads open, feeling they can not have them closed by snow or other causes without suffering serious financial loss.

Better Roads continued here

Dance Etiquette – 1921

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COUPLES BALLROOM DANCINGDancing is an art. More than that, it is a healthful art. In its graceful movements, cadenced rhythms, and expressive charms are evident the same beautiful emotions that are so eloquently expressed in music, sculpture, painting. And it is through these expressions of emotion, through this silent poetry of the body that dancing becomes a healthful art, for it imparts to the body–and mind–a poise and strength without which no one can be quite happy.

It is because the vital importance of dancing on the Mind and body has been universally recognized, that it has been added to the curriculum of public schools in almost every country. We find the youngsters revelling in folk-dances, and entering dancing games with a spirit that gives vigor to their bodies, balance and grace to their movements.

Consider, for a moment, the irresistible witchery of music, of rhythmic cadences. We hear the martial note of the drum, and unconsciously our feet beat time. We hear the first deep chords of the orchestra, and involuntarily our fingers mark the time of the measure. With the soft, mellow harmony of triplet melodies we are transported to the solemn vastness of a mountain beside a, gayly rippling stream. With the deep, sonorous bursts of triumphant melody, we are transported to the ocean’s edge, where the rumbling of the waves holds us in awed ecstasy. Thoughts of sorrow, of gladness, of joy, of hope surge through us and cry for expression. Dancing is nature’s way of expressing these emotions. Then let us dance, for in dancing we find poise and strength and balance. Let us dance for in dancing we find joy, pleasure, hope. It is the language of the feelings, and nature meant it for the expression of those feelings.

It is only when dancing is confined to hot, crowded rooms where the atmosphere is unwholesome, that it loses its healthful influence on mind and body. But where there is plenty of room and fresh air, plenty of good, soul-inspiring music–we say dance, young and old alike, dance for the keen pleasure and joy of the dance itself, and for the health that follows in its wake!

DANCING POSITIONS

Dancing has been revolutionized since the day when the German waltz was first introduced to polite society. And it is safe to say that some of our austere granddames would feel righteously indignant if they were suddenly brought back to the ballroom and forced to witness some of the modern dance innovations!

There seems to be an attempt, on the part of the younger generation (although the older generation is not so very far behind!) to achieve absolute freedom of movement, to go through the dance with a certain unrestrained impulsiveness unknown to the minuet or graceful quadrille. These newer dances and dancing interpretations are charming and entertaining; and yet there is the possibility of their becoming vulgar if proper dancing positions are not taken. The position is especially important in the latest dances.

In guiding a lady across the polished floor to the tune of a simple waltz or a gay fox-trot, the gentleman encircles her waist half way with his right arm, laying the palm of his hand lightly just above the waist line. With his left hand, he holds her right at arm’s length in the position most comfortable for both of them, taking special care not to hold it in an awkward or ungainly position. His face is always turned slightly to the left, while hers usually faces front or slightly to the right. The girl should place her left arm on her partner’s right arm. She must follow him and not try to lead the dance herself.

When the dance requires certain swaying movements, as almost all modern dances do, the lady inclines her body in harmony with that of her partner, and if the proper care is taken to retain one’s poise and dignity, not even a most exacting chaperon can find fault with the new steps.

Dance Etiquette continued here

Henry Ford promoted Square Dancing in the 1920′s to counter what he perceived to be the vulgar dances being embraced by the younger generation.  Square dancing has survived to the current day, with dancers world-wide participating in weekly dances. A typical square dancing club is Adelaide Outlaws in Adelaide, South Australia. There is bound to be a club near you if you are interested in joining.

Fashion Tips for Woman Motorists – 1917

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FEMALE MOTORING FASHIONS 1917It is not easy to be decorative in your automobile now that the manufacturers are going in for gay colour schemes both in upholstery and outside painting.

A putty-coloured touring car lined with red leather is very stunning in itself, but the woman who would look well when sitting in it does not carelessly don any bright motor coat at hand. She knows very well that to show up to advantage against red, and be in harmony with the putty-colour paint, her tweed coat should blend with the car, also her furs. Black is smart with everything, but fancy how impossible mustard, cerise and some shades of green would look against that scarlet leather!An orange car with black top, mud-guards and upholstery calls for a costume of white, black, brown, tawny grey, or, if one would be a poster, royal blue.

The rapid development of the automobile, with its windshields, limousine tops, shock absorbers, perfected engines and springs, has brought us to the point where no more preparation is needed for a thousand-mile run across country with an average speed of thirty miles an hour, than if we were boarding a train. One dresses for a motor as one would for driving in a carriage and those dun-colored, lineless monstrosities invented for motor use have vanished from view. More than this, woman to-day considers her decorative value against the electric blue velvet or lovely chintz lining of her limousine, exactly as she does when planning clothes for her salon. And why not? The manufacturers of cars are taking seriously their interior decoration as well as outside painting; and many women interior decorators specialise along this line and devote their time to inventing colour schemes calculated to reflect the personality of the owner of the car.

Special orders have raised the standard of the entire industry, so that at the recent New York automobile show, many effects in cars were offered to the public. Besides the putty-coloured roadster lined with scarlet, black lined with russet yellow, orange lined with black; there were limousines painted a delicate custard colour, with top and rim of wheels, chassis and lamps of the same Nattier Blue as the velvet lining, cushions and curtains. A beautiful and luxurious background and how easy to be decorative against it to one who knows how!

Another popular colour scheme was a mauve body with top of canopy and rims of wheels white, the entire lining of mauve, like the body. Imagine your woman with a decorative instinct in this car. So obvious an opportunity would never escape her, and one can see the vision on a Summer day, as she appears in simple white, softest blue or pale pink, or better still, treating herself as a quaint nosegay of blush roses, for-get-me-nots, lilies and mignonette, with her chiffons and silks or sheerest of lawns.

“But how about me?” one hears from the girl of the open car–a racer perhaps, which she drives herself. You are easiest of all, we assure you; to begin with, your car being a racer, is painted and lined with durable dark colours–battleship grey, dust colour, or some shade which does not show dirt and wear. The consequence is, you will be decorative in any of the smart coats, close hats and scarfs in brilliant and lovely hues,–silk or wool.

Woman’s Motoring Fashion Tips continued here

Jewelry as Decoration – 1917

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The use of jewelry as colour and line has really nothing to do with its intrinsic worth.

Just as when furnishing a house, one selects pictures for certain rooms with regard to their decorative quality alone, their colour with relation to the colour scheme of the room (The Art of Interior Decoration), so jewels should be selected either to complete costumes, or to give the keynote upon which a costume is built. A woman whose artist-dressmaker turns out for her a marvellous green gown, would far better carry out the colour scheme with some semi-precious stones than insist upon wearing her priceless rubies.

On the other hand, granted one owns rubies and they are becoming, then plan a gown entirely with reference to them, noting not merely the shade of their colour, but the character of their setting, should it be distinctive.

One of the most picturesque public events in Vienna each year, is a bazaar held for the benefit of a charity under court patronage. To draw the crowds and induce them to give up their money, it has always been the custom to advertise widely that the ladies of the Austro-Hungarian court would conduct the sale of articles at the various booths and that the said noble ladies would wear their family jewels. Also, that there be no danger of confusing the various celebrities, the names of those selling at each booth would be posted in plain lettering over it. Programmes are sold, which also inform patrons as to the name and station of each lovely vendor of flowers and sweets. It is an extraordinary occasion, and well worth witnessing once. The jewels worn are as amazing and fascinating as is Hungarian music. There is a barbaric sumptuousness about them, an elemental quality conveyed by the Oriental combining of stones, which to the western European and American, seem incongruous. Enormous pearls, regular and irregular, are set together in company with huge sapphires, emeralds, rubies and diamonds, cut in the antique way. Looking about, one feels in an Arabian Nights’ dream. On the particular occasion to which we refer, the most beautiful woman present was the Princess Metternich, and in her jewels decorative as any woman ever seen.

But the rule remains the same whether your jewels are inherited and rich in souvenirs of European courts, or the last work of Cartier. They must be a harmonious part of a carefully designed costume, or used with discretion against a background of costumes planned with reference to making them count as the sole decoration.

Jewelry as Decoration continued here