Sirs:

"Keep your ear to the ground for social changes and manifestations," advised a learned friend just before I left home for Harvard.

Following his counsel, I have noted many social implications in the grand parade in and out of the famous Yard. Not the least of them is a sign of disintegration of the individuality and vitality--a loss of color, if you please--in American womanhood.

It all comes out in the wash. One can learn a great deal about people by a casual look at the weekly laundry. If the man of the house is a laborer or railroad man, there's usually a pair or two of denim overalls and a matching jumper. If there are children in the family there is evidence of them on the clothesline. I understand that in New England old-fashioned longies appear on the lines later in the season. But it is feminine things hanging in the back yards which reveal sadly,--no dispassionately,--what has happened to our once ingenious women folk!

Rides 11 Miles

Twice daily I ride a cummuters' train through 11-odd miles of back yards of the Boston suburbs and while I'm not exactly a chronic clothesline peeping tom, one cannot help but note the predominant scenery along the Boston and Maine right-of-way. It can be presumed, I think, that the countless laundries hung out to dry in the numberless back yards of the area represent a cross-section of American family washes. And laundries haven't changed much in recent years, except on the feminine side.

I recall from the more leisurely days of thumbing through Sears Roebuck catalogues that women seemed to be wearing daring and glamorous undercostumes during that unregimented postwar era. There were gay primary colors and the whole gamut of pastels. There were novel shapes and patterns. Lace had a place; there were ruffles and embroidery. But that was before the OPA, the WPB and the CPA.

They Are Pink

What do we find now? I haven't looked though the catalogue lately but on the family clothesline are plain, brief, lace-less pink panties stretching 12 miles in all directions from Cambridge. No lace, no filmy stuff, no flamboyance, no sequins, no glamour! Just plain, pink underdrawers.

What has happened to the individualism that women used to display in pick-their personal things?

Arise, American womanhood. Bring color and personality back, especially to the tiresome scenery along the weary routes of the commuters' traine. --E. L., an average commuter