Vintage Beauty: When the Free State taxed the fairer sex

One of these days, we should imagine, the women of the Free State will have something very unpleasant to say to President de Valera and his Ministers.

When the Fianna Fáil Government, obsessed by the idea of protection, began to impose tariffs on this, that, and the other commodity, the women were resentful, but they suffered in silence, because they understood that patriotic duty demanded their co-operation.

After a while, however, things began to assume an almost fantastic aspect. Mr Sean Lemass tried to solve every problem by means of the formula "on with a tariff", much as the Queen in Alice in Wonderland dismissed her problems with the formula "off with his head".

No discrimination seems to have been used. Government officials were required to draw up the most highly complicated lists of unprotected goods, and Mr Lemass apparently amused himself by applying tariffs wholesale.

Women’s apparel came under the tariff-mongers’ eagle eye at an early stage ; and only a few weeks ago their footwear also was placed on the protected list.

Now the Minister has gone very much farther for he has announced the imposition of a tariff on cosmetics. A duty of no less than 50 per cent will be levied henceforward on all toilet preparations for the skin, hair, nails, teeth (the Minister is indelicate enough to mention false teeth) and mouth, as well as on all kinds of perfumery.

Presumably, all these mysterious preparations in future will be made in the Free State, but what woman will be satisfied with a powder that does not bear the hall-mark of Paris, or with a scent that instead of Eau de Cologne may be named Kiltimagh Water?

Is there no limit to the Government’s passion for tariffs? We are all in favour of industrial development on a sensible scale, but President de Valera and his friends evidently are determined to reduce even the art of feminine “make-up” to a drab level of unromantic sameness.

We have no doubt that Irish manufacturers will be able to produce admirable lip-stick and face cream but the women will continue to hanker after the chic of the imported varieties, simply because it is pretty Fanny’s way.*

* It seems the phrase ‘pretty Fanny’s way’ comes from a poem by Thomas Parnell called A Night-Piece on Death: ‘And all that’s madly wild, or oddly gay,/We call it only pretty Fanny’s way’