Evangelist Criticizes Women's Dress — 'Nearly Naked'

1914

Oliver on Dress

Evangelist Makes a Few Remarks While Sojourning on Pacific Coast

Rev. French E. Oliver, who conducted the Union Evangelistic Campaign in this town, a short time ago, has come into public notice on the Pacific coast, where he is spending a season for the benefit of his health, through severe arraignment of women for immodesty in dress.

Among his utterance on the subject, while at Venice, were the following: "Most assuredly I would say that women are losing their modesty. To the styles adopted by some of the women I attribute their downfall and the crowding of the divorce courts. Think of the fact that there are over one million divorce suits filed in the United States in one year. Women are dressing to attract the attention of men, and it is this situation that results in the downfall of both. Seventy per cent of the women who go in bathing daily have scant enough clothing to shield their nakedness. No stockings, low cut waists and neither garments that do not reach to their knees. Could that be considered womanly modesty? It is the same at the Eastern beaches that are at Venice. The more aristocratic the resort the more prevalent the lack of modesty.

"One reason why the world is not as good to-day as it was years ago is that the same religion is not being preached. There is too much modernism in present day religion. Religion can not be changed with the fashions, for there is but one religion and that is the one that was first preached."

—The Van Wert Daily Bulletin, Van Wert, OH, Aug. 22, 1914, p. 2.