know when work stopped. The law of 1890, therefore, provided that the ten-hour workday must fall between 6 a. m. and 10 p. m. The employment of women in manufacture was prohibited before and after those hours.

Even this limit of hours, however, proved inadequate for enforcement. So long as it was permissible to employ women ten hours at any time between six o'clock in the morning and ten o'clock at night (a period of sixteen hours), it was still exceedingly difficult to enforce the law effectually.

Moreover, a practice grew up known as "swapping." One manufacturer would employ women ten hours between six o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening, and another manufacturer would employ them additional hours up to ten o'clock at night. This, of course, entirely destroyed the effect of the law. Hence, after many defeats and more than a dozen years' agitation by the trade unions and other interested persons, the so-called "overtime bill" was passed in 1907. This provides that in Massachusetts' greatest manufacture, the textile industry, women may not be employed before six o'clock in the morning nor after six o'clock -instead of after ten o'clock-in the evening. This rigid provision, which copies the still more definite British textile act, has finally been successfully enforced.

Accompanying these successive efforts to cut down the period within which the legal workday must fall, there have been successive reductions of the legal day's and week's work. In 1883† the ten-hour day was extended to women employed in mechanical and mercantile establishments. In 1892 women's hours of labor in manufacturing and mechanical establishments were reduced to fifty-eight in one week. Eight years later, in 1900, § the same reduction was made for women in mercantile establishments, excepting that retail stores were exempted from this provision during December. In 1904 the exemption was repealed and work was limited to

*Laws of 1907, chap. 267.

Laws of 1892, chap. 357.

† Laws of 1883, chap. 157. § Laws of 1900, chap. 378.

|¦ Laws of 1904, chap. 397.

fifty-eight hours a week during the whole year. In 1908* the week's work in manufacturing and mechanical establishments was reduced to fifty-six hours.† Finally, in 1911, the weekly allowance of hours was reduced to fifty-four.

2. THE RIGID LAW: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

In this consistent sequence, extending through a long series of years, Massachusetts has followed the earlier experience of England. We find there, extending over an even longer period, a similar movement towards shorter and more rigidly defined hours, in the interest of enforcement.

In England the necessity of having fixed opening and closing hours was recognized in the very first effective statute limiting hours of labor. This was the British act of 1833 which forbade the employment of young persons under eighteen years in textile mills between 8.30 p. m. and 5.30 a. m., or more than twelve hours in any one day. There were other regulations for young children which need not be considered here.

The British law of 1844 was the first statute in any country to limit the working hours of adult women. It extended to them the provisions of the act of 1833, thus providing for all women employed in textile mills a maximum number of working hours and a period of rest at night between specified hours. From the beginnings of legislation it was realized that the effective enforcement of any limitation of hours by day was dependent upon the establishment of a fixed closing time at night.

The act of 1847 reduced women's hours of labor in textile mills to ten hours in one day. But the advocates of restriction, led by Lord Shaftesbury, were defeated in their

* Laws of 1908, chap. 645.

† Except that in any establishment "where the employment is by seasons," the week's work may be fifty-eight hours, if the total number of hours in the year does not exceed an average of fifty-six hours a week. Laws of 1911, chap. 484

attempt to have work at night prohibited between 6 p. m. and 6 a. m. instead of the original terminal hours. The experience of the factory inspectors showed very early, what was shown later in Massachusetts, that it was almost impossible to enforce the law effectively, so long as it was permissible to employ women at any time within a period of fifteen hours, that is, between 5.30 a. m. and 8 p. m.* It was realized that the textile law would be practically nonenforceable until a so-called "normal day" should be established. This meant that the legal workday should be required to fall between specified hours and within a fixed period of time, just equal in duration to the legal workday plus meal times.

Accordingly, in 1850, further legislation remedied this. defect in the textile law. It provided that women might be employed ten and one-half hours in the day, and it provided also that the workday must fall in the twelve-hour periods between 6 a. m. and 6 p. m. or 7 a. m. and 7 p. m., with one and one-half hours off for meals. Under this arrangement the "normal day" between the fixed opening and closing hours exactly coincided with the ten and one-half hours of labor allowed, plus meal hours. It also made possible a twelve-hour period of rest at night.

Subsequent acts have still further reduced the length of the workday and have made the British textile law as nearly definite and exact as is humanly possible. Work must fall between 6 a. m. and 6 p. m. or 7 a. m. and 7 p. m., with two hours off for meals on week days; and on Saturdays it must fall between six o'clock in the morning and twelve o'clock at noon, or seven o'clock in the morning and one o'clock in the afternoon, with one half hour off for meals. It may not begin or end on the half hour.

See a similar complaint by the New York Mercantile Inspector in the year 1910. "The part of Section 161 relative to the hours of labor of females from sixteen to twenty-one years of age, is one of the most difficult provisions of the law to enforce. . . . The provision calling for ten hours' work between the hours of 7 a. m. and 10 p. m, allows a period of fifteen hours per day in which to perform ten hours' work." Report of the New York State Department of Labor, 1910, p. 132.

Of the effects of these rigid provisions on both industry and labor, one of the foremost English economists writes with enthusiasm.

"How potently," says Mr. Sidney Webb, "the additional freedom which the law thus secures, to master as well as to man, has reacted on the efficiency of the industry is, at the opening of the twentieth century, one of our proudest boasts. In spite of the keenest foreign competition, the Lancashire cotton mill, in point of technical efficiency, still leads the world, and the Lancashire cotton spinner, once in the lowest depths of social degradation, now occupies, as regards the general standard of life of a whole trade, perhaps the foremost position among English wage-earners.”

Following the first textile legislation, the acts were slowly extended to take in other industries, such as print works (1845); bleaching and dyeing (1860); lace works (1861); bake houses (1863); earthen ware, lucifer matches, percussion caps and cartridge packing, paper-staining and fustian cutting (1864). Between 1867 and 1907 the acts were still further extended by taking in many other subsidiary branches of industry and the so-called "workshops," where work is done by hand.

3. THE ELASTIC LAW: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN

In all the various so-called "non-textile" acts which followed the original textile legislation, the same general principle was followed, providing for a maximum number of working hours by day, between fixed hours before and after which it was illegal to employ any women, and a period of rest at night. But the general laxness of the non-textile acts and the many exceptions allowed have proved as damaging to enforcement as the rigidity of the textile acts proved helpful.

The non-textile acts have nominally prohibited night

* Hutchins, B. L., and Harrison, A.: A History of Factory Legislation. Preface by Sidney Webb, p. x. 2nd Edition revised. London, King, 1911.

work and have provided for a fixed workday; but in a large number of trades these restrictions have been deliberately brought to naught by allowing special exceptions up to a late hour of the evening.

Thus, for instance, the general act for non-textile factories provides that women may not be employed therein more than ten and one-half hours in one day, and that employment must fall in the twelve-hour periods between 6, 7, or 8 a. m. and 6, 7, or 8 p. m., with one and one-half hours allowed off for meals. But in certain trades overtime is allowed for a variety of reasons, such as press of work at certain seasons, or when the material to be manufactured may be spoiled by weather. In such trades women may be employed twelve hours in one day and as late as 10 p. m.; that is, employment is supposed to fall within the fourteenhour periods between 6, 7, or 8 a. m. and 8, 9, or 10 p. m., with two hours allowed off for meals.

The experience gained in the enforcement of the textile. law was ignored. The laxness, or margin of supplementary hours allowed for evening overtime in the non-textile laws, has long been not only a hardship to the workers but a constant obstacle to the enforcement of these more lax statutes. The legal permission to employ women until ten o'clock in the evening has led to uncontrollable illegal employment after that hour. The difficulties of enforcement have been practically insuperable. In this, inspectors and all fair-minded observers agree.*

Gradually, however, this state of affairs has been found intolerable. It has been realized that evening overtime must be curtailed and the closing hour must be set earlier, if the non-textile acts are to be made of practical benefit. Beginning with the Consolidating Act of 1878, therefore, we find the beginnings of a change in this direction. From among many, we may cite a few examples of the gradual stiffening of the non-textile acts and the restriction of overtime work.

See Part II of this volume, pp. 464–472.