NUMBER OF FEMALES ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS COMPARED WITH THE TOTAL FEMALE POPULATION 10 YEARS OF AGE and Over By STATES IN 1910 United States Census, 1910, Volume IV, Occupation Statistics

Unlike men, women seldom work in industries where there is great danger of fatal accident, but in addition to general strains, they often work in the presence of irritating dusts or poisons or under extremes of heat and cold. Women who silver mirrors must often work in rooms where the temperature reaches 104° F. In twine and jute mills women work in the steam and heat of the spinning rooms where the spray frequently wets their clothing to the waist and the pools of water on the floor compel them to go barefoot.

The inability of most women workers to protect themselves, the dangers to which they are exposed, and the harmful results to society of undermining the health of the future mothers of the race, have caused public opinion to demand special protection for women as a health measure. The principal form which such special protection has taken in this country is that of regulating hours of work. Special provisions for their safety, health, and comfort are OCcasionally found and a few classes of work are entirely forbidden. Recent legislation suggesting important new possibilities provides for the fixing of minimum wages and forbids work directly before and after childbirth. The special laws affecting American women wageearners are described in detail in the pages which follow. In addition it must be remembered that women benefit also by general factory legislation, by workmen's compensation, and by other forms of social insurance.

HOURS

One of the oldest, most frequent, and most important forms of protective legislation for women is the limitation of working hours. In 1916 only six American states, in most of which the number of women at work was comparatively small, had no such laws for any classes of work.

Daily Hours

The limitation of daily hours of work is important both as a public health measure and as a measure for better citizenship. The great strain of modern industry has already been mentioned, and it has been pointed out that most women, with slighter strength and less nervous energy, feel the strain more quickly than most men. Only a sufficient time for rest can repair the resultant fatigue. If

this is not secured a decline in health results, which in the case of women may weaken the coming generation and thus menace the health of the race.

Though less emphasis has perhaps been placed on the civic aspect of the question, limitation of working hours is necessary on this ground also. Comparatively few women are so fortunate as to be employed in work which is valuable for moral and intellectual training and development; all must have leisure if they are to have opportunity for education and self-expression, to say nothing of the recreation that every normal human being craves. With the wider share in civic activities which is constantly opening to women it is especially important that they should have sufficient leisure to become alert, well-developed human beings.

From the economic point of view, also, shorter hours for women. are a benefit. Attention of industrial managers is tardily being directed to the fact that in most sorts of work more can be accomplished, under modern conditions of speeding up, in a reasonably short work day than in a day regularly drawn out past the normal physiological limit. Thus the best interests of industry, the argument most frequently adduced against shorter hours, is really an added point in their favor.

The eight-hour day has as yet been given by law to but few women workers. The District of Columbia and a small group of western states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, and Washington, were in 1916 the only states making this restriction. The largest group of states, numbering twenty-eight, have the nine or ten-hour day and a weekly maximum of from fifty-four to sixty hours. The Women's Trade Union League has estimated that many more men than women have the eight-hour day by law. Twenty-nine states, the federal government, and the District of Columbia require the eight-hour day on public work. Fourteen states, among them most of the principal mining states, require the eight-hour day in mines and seven states have established an eight-hour day for railroad telegraphers. Almost all the beneficiaries of this legislation are men, while the number of women employed in most of the women's eighthour states is comparatively small. It is doubtful also if women, who are seldom trade union members, have shared proportionately in the recent spread of the eight-hour day through collective action by the

workers. Eight-hour bills have several times been introduced into state legislatures and failed of passage on the ground of "interstate competition-we would like to pass it, but it would handicap our state compared with our neighbors." After such an experience in Massachusetts in 1916 the National Consumers' League and the Women's Trade Union League made plans to meet the objection by a national campaign for the eight-hour day. Conferences on the subject are being held throughout the country and it is planned to introduce eight-hour bills at the 1917 legislative sessions in forty states. Leaders of the movement even hope that following the principle of the federal child labor law Congress may be induced to bar from interstate commerce products made by women working more than eight hours a day.

American legislation has in general tended to cover large groups of industries with one and the same restriction. The earliest and the most rudimentary laws cover only manufacturing and perhaps the closely allied "mechanical" pursuits. Such was the scope of the early ten-hour law passed by Massachusetts in 1874, and to-day the work of women is limited in North Carolina in manufacturing and in Georgia in "cotton and woolen manufacturing" alone. As excessive hours and overstrain have been noted in other occupations, they have been added to the regulated groups. Work in mercantile establishments was first limited in the 'eighties. The best modern laws now cover either a long list of specified industries, as in California, where the eight-hour day applies to laundries, hotels and restaurants, lodging and apartment houses, hospitals, places of amusement, telephones and telegraphs, express and transportation, or are inclusive in general terms, as in Pennsylvania where hours are restricted in all occupations except farm work and domestic service. Aside from these two last-mentioned occupations, for which no regulation of hours has yet been attempted in America, the principal exceptions are the canning industry, and retail stores in the last week or so before Christmas. Both these exemptions are of course dictated entirely by the demands of business and leave many women unprotected at times of great industrial pressure. A few states exempt small establishments or the rural districts from the laws, apparently with the idea that rigid restrictions are not needed when personal relationships are possible and that they might