They are the wealthy classes of countries with a lower industrial structure--nearer the archaic, quasi-industrial type--together with the later accessions of the wealthy classes in the more advanced industrial communities.

The latter have not yet had time to divest themselves of the plebeian canons of taste and of reputability carried over from their former, lower pecuniary grade.

Such survival of the corset is not infrequent among the higher social classes of those American cities, for instance, which have recently and rapidly risen into opulence.

If the word be used as a technical term, without any odious implication, it may be said that the corset persists in great measure through the period of snobbery--the interval of uncertainty and of transition from a lower to the upper levels of pecuniary culture.

That is to say, in all countries which have inherited the corset it continues in use wherever and so long as it serves its purpose as an evidence of honorific leisure by arguing physical disability in the wearer.