LIMITING THE HOURS OF WOMEN'S WORK
Henry, Alice
Limiting the Hours of Women's Work The Campaign in Illinois for the Ten-Hour Law By ALICE HENRY THE industrial development of the Middle West is at the present time in a state of transition, if...
...Ten-hour Law Secured WITH the introduction of the Eight-Hour Bill on March 30 the campaign in the Springfield legislature began...
...The last strike of the manufacturers was to introduce on top of the ten-hour bill an eight-hour amendment, intended to kill the prospects of the new bill, but the girl-lobbyists and their friends succeeded in warding off that specious danger and the ten-hour bill passed the legislature on the very last day of the session, was signed by Governor Deneen and went into force on July 1, 1909...
...Fur one who really uaderstaads Ihe fui-ts aad forces Involved, It Is mere Juggllug with words aud empty legal phrase to matatala the opposite...
...All right," said the Waitresses' Union, a very lively set of girls, "then we go ahead ourselves...
...They discovered that there may be cases when even a labor bill may be turned over-night into an employers' tool, and that there are many more ways of killing a bill than straight out defeating it...
...The distribution of the leaflet will be costless as the members of the League will attend to the distribution in the ward and precinct wherein each one resides, according to a plan similar to that pursued in politically educating British electorates and not unknown within the boundaries of Wisconsin...
...To help them so to understand their position, the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago has undertaken an unusual campaign of publicity...
...Louis D. Brandeis of Boston, bsth of whom gave their services...
...When it did come it was a victory for the principles of humanity and for the conservation of one of the most precious of national assets, the health and happiness of the yOung womanhood of the country...
...Miss Anna Nichoies and Miss Jane Addams, members of the League, Miss Mary McEnerney of the Bindery Women, Miss Emma Steghagen and Miss Anna Hus-ley of the Boot and Shoe Workers, Mjss Lena Buchweits of the Garment Workers' Miss Elizabeth Christman of the Glove Workers and Miss Mae Nihil of the Suspender Workers...
...More, they pushed it vigorously and urged all friends of the cause to accept and work for the compromise...
...Save them from the terrors of utter want...
...The principal manufacturers' arguments were that it would destroy the trades affected, and that real working girls did not want the change since it would be sure to lessen their wages and might throw them out of work altogether...
...There can be no such intelligent cooperation unless the thousands of women and girls affected by the law know what are their rights and privileges under it...
...Ko vtoinua desires to work twelve and thirteen hours dally la a fac-luryi and contract for such toll are Involuntary la subtance even If voluntary la form...
...Therefore, acting upon the advice of their good and faithful friend, Senator Waltel Clyde Jones, the introducer of the original measure, the eight-hour bill was dropped and a substitute bill, an exact duplicate of the Oregon law put in its place...
...They had thought, the cleverest of them all, that all they had to do was to marshall their arguments, keep their eyes on their friends and convert or conquer their opponents...
...First Attempt Futile SIXTEEN years ago there was an eight-hour law for the protection of women workers in Illinois...
...Judge Richard S. Tuthill granted the injunction asked for, declaring the law unconstitutional...
...It was more or less novel legislation...
...Supreme Court Given Valuable Data AT THE Supreme Court hearing on February 10, 1910, the cause of the working woman was pleaded by Mr...
...Meanwhile the subject was ventilated in all quarters...
...If she is a mother It also enlarges the freedom of her children and adds to their elllclency i.j giving ber at leaat some shreds of time and strength l..r her tuuttly...
...If uot altogether, prohibited) (or o lherwUt uai-oulrolled economic force operutlng through eoatrael deprive iheiu of liberty aad of the right to acquire properly aad lead wholesome liven...
...The girls proved that they were speaking for the organized women workers of Illinois, and told, very simply and clearly, how hard their work was, so that if women were to continue in factory life at all, their hours must be shortened...
...Conferences were held at which representatives from organized working women, the various women's clubs, settlements, and others interested discussed what should be asked from the legislature and what form the proposed bill should take...
...An unknown donor has made a gift of one hundred dollars to the League to cover the issue of a leaflet printed in a number of languages giving the text of the law, and explaining to every woman who may be in doubt as to whether her occupation comes under the act, or who knows that the law is being broken to call, write, or telephone to either Mr...
...The most powerful argument against Ritchie was the plea of his own witness, Dora Windeguth...
...One of the strongest arguments it set forth showed that twenty-five States of the Union besides Illinois, including nearly all those in which women are employed in factory or similar work have found it necessary to take action for the protection of their health and safety and the public welfare by enacting laws limiting the hours of labor for adult women, and that it is more than sixty years since Great Britain passed the first legislation of this kind...
...The girls who engineered the campaign say that it was a great education to them...
...They proved a strong backing to the State lawyers...
...But the Oregon law was no longer novel legislation...
...The Commission, while printing the "Plea" in full as an appendix to their report, frankly stated from the first that they could not take up the question of hours of work...
...They told how the ironing machine which a girl treads as she irons her five hundred shirts a day, or the numbering machine which exacts from her its twenty or twenty-five thousand impressions in the same time, injures her for her after life and for the possibilities of happy motherhood, how piece-work by its urgent demands upon the ambitious or the willing or the hard-driven worker exhausts the store of strength the youthful employee starts out with, how the waitress compelled to work her ten hours in those ten hours carries her heavy tray ten miles...
...By Mary the beloved, who bore the world's redemption In her bosom) by the memory of our own dear mothers who kissed our houIn awake...
...The entire press of Chicago took the matter up and with a uniform voice asked for protection for the health of the women of the State...
...And to us all do Tbon grant wisdom and firm determination that we may not suffer the women of our nation to be drulned of strength and hope for the enrichment of a few, lest our homes grow poor In the wifely sweetness and motherly love which have been the saving strength and glory of onr country...
...for workers in all other States felt that the fate of present laws and of future legislation in other States would be largely decided by the result of the appeal...
...The brunt of the battle fell on four girls, Miss Anna Wil-lard and Miss Elizabeth Maloney of the Waitresses' Union, Miss Agnes Nestor of the Glove Workers and Miss Lulu Holley...
...An immediate appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of Illinois...
...Some day America will bow her head in national shame when she recalls how year after year has passed on with its tale of ruined lives and wrecked hopes in the train of this and such like decisions...
...As Raymond Robins said, "Here we have Dora Windeguth, skilled and skinned, yet pleading for the right to work thirteen and a half hours in Ritchie's sweatshop...
...the W. C, Ritchie Company, manufacturers of paper boxes, filed a bill of complaint for an injunction to restrain the State Factory Department from enforcing the law...
...Healisui, batted on statlsttea and seieatlllc Inves-tigalioas, fully sustala the aouadaess of such labor legislation...
...mechanical establishments and laundries...
...Justice Brewer speaking for his brethren of the Bench and himself...
...RICHARD T. ELY THE legisiation of the civilised world, as a whole, shown HfiiuieMerm-e la the proposition that saal-lurj uud mural condition* and bourn of labor of noiueu uiuxl be regulated, aad that for then* night work la fuetorle Mbuultl be sharply limited...
...Mr...
...A ten-hour day, an eight-hour day, a forty-eight hour week, a fifty-four hour week, the raising of the age of legal minority,—these were among the many suggestions that were thrashed out...
...Oregon Case Brings Hope FROM the West, land of hope and longing, came at length a word of cheer...
...The most able of factory inspectors will be helpless without the intelligent cooperation of the workers themselves...
...Grant them strength of body to hear the strain of unremitting toll, and may no present pressure unfit them for the holy duty of borne and motherhood which the future may Isy upon them...
...The great importance of this declaration was at once seen by Chicago organized women and social workers...
...Don't you think" said Miss Maloney, turning to her hearers, "that eight hours a day is enough for a woman to walk...
...She said she was 45 years old, had been in Mr...
...The remarkable brief he filed was prepared by Miss Josephine Goldmark of the National Consumers' League under his superintendence...
...The only argument on the side of the manufacturers was Shylock's plea, "The law allows it and the court awards it...
...The law exists...
...for It conserves her lu-iiilh and strngth and leugtheuM out the period of proiltabie nork...
...The opinion was given by the late Mr...
...William J. Calhoun, on the eve of his leaving for China as United States Minister, and by Mr...
...Not in Illinois alone...
...It remained in operation for about eighteen months, when a manufacturer of particularly antiquated ideas, Ritchie by name, a maker of paper boxes, took a test case up to the State Supreme Court at Springfield, arguing against the law on the ground that it was unconstitutional, inasmuch as it was class legislation...
...Otherwise the best of employers will still be at the mercy of the worst...
...factories...
...The grit, courage and self-sacrifice of the Waitresses was indeed shown when they accepted a bill which excluded their own trade...
...This has been a source of a great deal of confusion among the friends of the shorter working-day even in labor circles...
...The State of Oregon had a law, limiting the work of women in certain lines of employment to ten hours...
...It does not restrict her light to work it enlarges that right...
...Court Sustains Law THE decision of the court hung in abeyance for over two months...
...Factory life and production on a huge scale, with the usual concomitants of a crowded population huddled under bad conditions into one ef the biggest cities of the world, with accessory industrial centers incessantly springing up in ether parts of the State, the fierce struggle of a working population to adapt themselves to changing conditions, complicated by the fact that every year sees the arrival from Europe of thousands ef new workers who are even less able than the native-born Americans to successfully keep up the fight against increasingly bad conditions of work and wages...
...It grew in importance amid the imposing environment of Suffrage Day on April 13, and after nine weeks of hope often deferred and the exciting experiences of the inner political methods of a political party struggle the climax was reached when on the last day of the session the compromise bill, legalizing a ten-hour day and limiting the trades affected to such as come under the definition of factories, mechanical establishments and laundries, went through...
...The manufacturers lined up in enormous numbers to watch over their own interests...
...Ritchie's employment since she had been 13, and was a skilled worker, but that she could not support those dependent upon her unless she were allowed to work overtime...
...liberty— it itilordn her liberty...
...Primarily Illinois is an agricultural state, and she still retains the type of local government and the type of legislation springing out of the primitive conditions in which the life of an agricultural state has its beginning...
...On various occasions during the session other helpers, would take a hand, Mrs...
...A tea-hour day for women such us has been passed In Massa-chumetts and sustaled by the Supreme Court of that mule linen not deprive "Alary Hotmen of...
...A laundryman, Curt duller, standing for the Laundrymen's Associaticn, tested this law, first in the highest legal tribunal of his own state, where the decision went against him and the law was maintained, and finally in the Supreme Court of the United States, where by a unanimous decision the limitation of women's work was held to be constitutional on tne grounds (and in the reasons given lies the whole force of the finding), that twenty States had passed such laws and that aside from this legislative precedent a State has reasonable ground for believing that the public health, safety, and welfare require legal limitation of women's work in What is Industrial Liberty...
...From all these conferences, however, the trade-union girls came away absolutely unanimous upon one point, viz., that they would ask for an eight-hour day and for nothing short of an eight-hour day, whatever modification they might afterwards in the course of the legislative battle have to accept...
...Edgar A. Davies, Chief Factory Inspector, or upon the Women's Trade Union League, at their headquarters...
...It had successfully passed all the legal tests and though only a ten-hour law and therefore far short of what was desired, still it stood for the principle of limitation, and that was the great principle that it was necessary to confirm by statute in Illinois...
...Is not this essential slavery without any of the compensations of the slave regime...
...If It must be so that our women toil like men, help us still to reverence in them the mothers of the future...
...And, backed by the Women's Trade Union League of Chicago, they did go ahead, and made "The Girls' Bill" the talk of the session...
...Brandeis' argument even stronger that when two years ago he pleaded the cause of the Oregon workers, it having lately been scientifically proved that overwork produces in the blood an actual poison known as the toxin of fatigue...
...By PROF...
...Yet nowadays, grafted onto the still persisting agricultural basis of the state's housekeeping, we find the addition of manufactures...
...At the instance of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, A Prayer for all Working Women BY WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH (Reprinted from the American Magazine...
...It was then decided to present the demand for an eight-hour day to the Industrial Commission then sitting, which had been appointed to report to the next legislature a measure for the safety, health, and comfort of employees in factories, mercantile establishments, mills and workshops...
...there is no heller Illustration ef the leuglhs to which dovtrlualre assumptiuus may carry an intelligent muu, even a maa of great capacity, than the position John Stuart Mill took with respect to protective labor legislation for women.—Prow "{Kcoaomlc Theory aad Labor LeglnlatIon," an address delivered before the American Association for Labor Legislation...
...Speakers went out in all directions and the field campaign resulted in the passing of strong resolutions on behalf of the law from central labor bodies, from religious conferences, from representative meetings of social workers and women's clubs...
...If we mean by this any more than a pious exclamation, we must all see to it that the law is enforced...
...The reason of this modification was that there came a stage when it was quite evident that the original eight-hour bill would be thrown out...
...She need not give her name...
...If they yearn for love and the sovereign freedom of their own home, give them In due time the fulfillment of their sweet desires...
...The Battle Begins SO ON December 10, 1908, the Women's Trade Union League called a special conference of trade-union women, delegates from fifteen trades being there...
...a laundry worker...
...Law Attacked in Court IT WAS not long, before the expected, almost wished-for test case to prove out the law in the courts came up...
...Limiting the Hours of Women's Work The Campaign in Illinois for the Ten-Hour Law By ALICE HENRY THE industrial development of the Middle West is at the present time in a state of transition, if anything in the United States can ever be said to be in any other stage...
...by the little daughters who must soon go out Into thai world which we are now fashioning for others, we beseech Thee that we may deal aright by all women...
...On the occasion of one public hearing they claimed to have had three hundred of their number present in that small and shockingly ventilated legislative chamber...
...Raymond Robins, President of the Women's Trade Union League, Miss Mary Me-, Dowell its Vice-President...
...OGOD, tvc pray Thee for our ulsters who are leaving the ancient shelter of the borne to earn their wage In the store and shop amid the press of modern life...
...Teach them to stand liy their sisters loyally, that by United action they may better their common lot...
...Give them grace to cherish under the new surroundings the old sweetness and gentleness of womanhood, and In the rough mingling of life to keep the purity of their hearts and lives untarnished...
...Long live the law...
...The request for the limitation of women's work was embodied in "A Plea for Legislation for our Women Workers" laid before the Commission at its sitting held on January 23, 3909...
...What Was Gained THE campaign was called the Eight-Hour fight and yet the bill which eventually passed into law was a ten-hour bill, and it was supported by all the organized women...
...All this they had indeed to accomplish, but much more...
...Meanwhile industrial pressure became harder, speeding up more deadly, but in front of every body of workers in indignant rebellion or apathetic despair ever rose this high immovable wall of unconstitutionality...
...Recent investigations made Mr...
...This is prosperity with a vengeance...
...Calhoun ridiculed the idea that there could be any interference with real freedom in a statute restraining a woman from making a suicidal bargain...
Vol. 2 • June 1910 • No. 23
