In any business expanding so rapidly as is the telephone, the number of new employes taken on, not to replace others who have resigned or been dismissed but to increase the operating force, renders the consideration of average time of employment or length of service liable to mislead, or at least suggest wrong deductions and conclusions if unaccompanied with proper precautions.

Moreover, efficiency of service is not increased perceptibly after a certain length of experience has been reached. After eight or ten months' service, it is claimed that the reasonably bright operator is as efficient as she will ever be at switchboard work.

Strikes and Operators' Unions.

Telephone operators' strikes have been remarkably rare, and generally very short. During the investigation, records of less than a dozen strikes were discovered, and these were minor matters which in no case lasted more than a week.

One or two of these when

Practically no organization exists among operators. Only five local federal unions of telephone operators are affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. None of these is large or located in a city of considerable size. visited seemed to be more like social clubs than trade unions. In all cases their relations with local managers were entirely friendly. In the large cities the attitude of the local managers, and of the companies as a whole, is distinctly antagonistic toward labor organizations among operators. It was pointed out that with the almost universal fact of short experience for a vast majority of the operators, any organization among them would be likely to be in the control of young girls inexperienced in any kind of industrial affairs with only three or four months' experience in the telephone business. Managers who were most apprehensive of the danger from trade unions among operators insisted that their feelings and opinions were not based upon general objections to trade-unionism itself, and that they would not object to unions if in the future the telephone business got to a point where the mass of its operators were women of mature years, who had been for a reasonable time in the company's employ.

United States Supreme Court.

Decision in the Case of Curt Miller vs. The State of Oregon.

It is undoubtedly true, as more than once declared by this court, that the general right to contract in relation to one's business is part of the liberty of the individual, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution; yet it is equally well settled that this liberty is not absolute and extending to all contracts, and that a State may, without conflicting with the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, restrict in many respects the individual's power of contract. Without stopping to discuss at length the extent to which a State may act in this respect, we refer to the following cases in which the question has been considered: Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 578; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366; Lochner v. New York, supra.

That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon the body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.

Still again, history discloses the fact that woman has always been dependent upon man. He established his control at the outset by superior physical strength, and this control in various forms, with diminishing intensity, has continued to the present. As minors, though not to the same extent, she has been looked upon in the courts as needing especial care that her rights may be preserved. Education was long denied her, and while now the doors of the school-room are opened and her opportunities for acquiring knowledge are great, yet even with that and the consequent increase of

capacity for business affairs it is still true that in the struggle for subsistence she is not an equal competitor with her brother. Though limitations upon personal and contractual rights may be removed by legislation, there is that in her disposition and habits of life which will operate against a full assertion of those right. She will still be where some legislation to protect her seems necessary to secure a real equality of rights. Doubtless there are individual exceptions, and there are many respects in which she has an advantage over him; but looking at it from the viewpoint of the effort to maintain an independent position in life, she is not upon an equality. Differentiated by these matters from the other sex, she is properly placed in a class by herself, and legislation designed for her protection may be sustained, even when like legislation is not necessary for men and could not be sustained. It is impossible to close one's eyes to the fact that she still looks to her brother and depends upon him. Even though all restrictions on political, personal, and contractual rights were taken away, and she stood, so far as statutes are concerned, upon an absolutely equal plane with him, it would still be true that he is so constituted that she will rest upon and look to him for protection; that her physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal functions—having in view not merely her own health, but the well-being of the race-justify legislation to protect her from the greed as well as the passion of man. The limitations which this statute places upon her contractual powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as to the time she shall labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit of all. Many words cannot make this plainer. The two sexes differ in structure of body, in the functions to be performed by each, in the amount of physical strength, in the capacity for long-continued labor, particularly when done standing, the influence of vigorous health upon the future well-being of the race, the self-reliance which enables one to assert full rights, and in the capacity to maintain the struggle for subsistence. This difference justifies a difference in legislation

and upholds that which is designed to compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon her.

We have not referred in this discussion to the denial of the elective franchise in the State of Oregon, for while that may disclose a lack of political equality in all things with her brother, that is not of itself decisive. The reason runs deeper, and rests in the inherent difference between the two sexes, and in the different functions in life which they perform.

For these reasons, and without questioning in any respect the decision in Lochner v. New York, we are of the opinion that it cannot be adjudged that the act in question is in conflict with the Federal Constitution, so far as it respects the work of a female in a laundry, and the judgment of the Supreme Court of Oregon is Affirmed.

Westminster Review. 171: 383-95. April, 1909.

Women's Industries, Past and Present. Frances Swiney.

As ruthlessly as the woman had been thrust back into the home (rendered in truth a prison), deprived of status, personality and rights, even the right of choice in the labour market, so she was now, as ruthlessly, dragged out of her home, and thrown into the whirl of an economic competition, that no longer dealt with the muscles and brains of the competitors, but with their essential necessities, their bodies, their lives and their souls. The industries practically became the same for men and women, but women were from the first placed at a disadvantage in point of wage and privilege. It may be argued, that there was soon remedial legislation. True; the Factory Acts were passed. Women and children were, at least in England, forbidden to work beyond certain hours and before a certain age limit. State inspection of factories compelled employers to regard perfunctory sanitary rules. But improvement in environment did not mean a higher rate of wage. On the contrary, in proportion, as the wages of

men increased through the political pressure of a widened male electorate, and the artisan, the agricultural labourer, the small house-owner and the lodger became enfranchised, and thus had a direct voice in urging on reforms, so the average wages of women fell, for women remained the only portion of the population that could be mercilessly exploited without the fear of political reprisals. If men refused to work for a lower wage, there were always thousands of defenceless, voteless women ready to take their places, and be thankful for a mere pittance to do the same task. The short-sighted injustice that denied to the working woman political rights was directly the most powerful weapon held in the hands of the employers with which to strike the male workers into economic subjection. Take, for example, America. I quote from an expert authority: "Woman's labour, being so much cheaper than man's labour, replaces the latter in thousands of instances, and frequently leaves to the men no other choice but to abandon the particular branch of employment or be satisfied with smaller wages."

In the textile industries in this country and in America, the number of women workers far exceed that of the men. In the cotton mills of the Southern States, the children employed exceed the women. If babies at the breast could be made useful to the mill-owners they too would be sacrificed to the Moloch of gold.

And what is the state in this country of the woman-worker? I quote again from an expert: "When we turn to women we find that things are even worse. An unskilled woman's wage is about 10/- per week. In our recent enquiry in Birmingham it was found that wherever women replaced men the former always received a much lower wage and one that was not proportionate to the skill or intelligence required by the work, but approximated to a certain fixed level-about 10/- to 12/- per week, the majority of women getting the lower amount."

Now this is the rate of wage in what may be called the higher standard of labour, i. e., in the factories themselves. But what of the Home Industries, the euphemistic title under