The act of 1878 allowed women to be employed overtime in non-textile factories, as described above, 48 days during the year and on five days in any week. In the act of 1895 such overtime work was reduced to 30 times during the year and permitted on only three days of the week.

Similar overtime employment has been allowed also for articles of "perishable nature." This exception includes such places of employment as fruit-preserving establishments. In the act of 1878 such employment was allowed therein 96 times during the year and on five days in the week. In 1895 such overtime was cut down to 60 times during the year, and in 1901 it was further reduced, being allowed only 50 times during the year, and on not more than three days of the week.

By a retrograde movement a special amendment had been inserted into the act of 1891, exempting from all operation of the acts, "the process of cleaning and preparing fruit so far as necessary to prevent the spoiling of the fruit on its arrival at a factory or workshop, during the months of June, July, August, and September." This wholesale exemption allowed women to be employed unlimited hours, by day or night, on certain processes in the fruit preserving establishments. Though the exemption was meant to apply only to "cleaning and preparing fruit on arrival," its effect was to nullify totally the laws governing hours of labor in those establishments. The legal permission to work unlimited hours on certain processes led inevitably to the illegal employment of women in all processes.

Of a similar consequence from the exemptions granted to the fish-curing trade, the British Chief Inspector of Factories wrote in discouragement in 1901:*

"Starting with an exemption for one process, that of 'gutting, salting, and packing,' the industry would seem to have shaken itself gradually free from control, until now we find fish that have been in salt for several weeks dealt with as

* British Sessional Papers. Vol. X, 1901. Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, pp. 338–339.

perishable articles. Given plenty of time and unsuitable surroundings, every article of food is to some extent perishable, and when a herring has been kept in salt for some weeks there is no reason for working on it at night except the reason that the day will bring other work, and in this seems to lie the cause of much of the late and irregular hours of the fishcuring trade. . . .”

Under the British law, however, the Home Secretary is empowered to issue “special orders," extending or restricting the overtime exemptions. After twelve years of agitation by the factory inspectors and others against the abuses of overtime work and the impossibility of enforcing these useless statutes in fruit-preserving establishments, a special order was issued by the Home Secretary in 1907. This was in line with all previous experience, which had proved that laws governing the hours of labor cannot be enforced without a fixed opening and closing hour. The order prohibited employment of women in fruit-preserving establishments between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. This still leaves a very long workday in these establishments, but an effective step has been taken toward ultimate protection of the workers by the prohibition of night work.

Another interesting example of the gradual tendency to restrict evening overtime work and limit the workday more strictly by an early closing hour is shown in the history of British legislation regarding the laundries. Before 1895 the laundries had not been subject to the Factory Acts. In the act of that year they were included for the first time, but instead of being governed by the same hours of labor as other establishments, a different and unenforceable set of hours was prescribed for the laundries. No closing hour was set, so that the fourteen-hour workday permissible under the law might be and was worked either by day or by night. It was not until a special act was passed in 1907 that women employed in laundries obtained protection at all comparable to that of women in other occupations.

This law still permits a very long working day and work

ing week (sixty-eight hours), and exemptions of many kinds still defeat its effective enforcement. But a beginning has been made by providing that the workday must end at 9 p.m.

In their report for 1909, the women factory inspectors noted that the number of complaints of excessive hours in laundries was steadily declining, showing how the fixed and earlier closing hour was facilitating the enforcement of the law. "It may be hoped," says the latest edition of the standard history of British factory legislation, "that the act of 1907 will be a step towards the normal day which the experience of generations in regard to other industries has shown to be in the best interests, not only of the workers, but of the trades concerned."*

A fourth employment (besides non-textile factories, fruit-preserving establishments, and laundries) in which a special laxity of hours has been legal until recently, are the flax scutch mills. In the Consolidating Factory Act of 1878 and earlier, these mills were totally exempted from all restrictions of hours by night as well as by day, provided that no children or young persons were employed therein, and provided that employment did not continue longer than six months in the year. In 1907 this special exemption was repealed and the flax scutch mills included in the scope of the textile acts, in order to bring the British laws into conformity with the terms of the Berne Convention of 1906 on night work, to which Great Britain had been a party.†

Thus the history of the factory acts in Great Britain shows as conclusively as in Massachusetts, how the laws limiting the workday have had to be consistently made more exact and more rigid, in the interest of enforcement. The process is still far from complete. Twenty years ago, Mr. Sidney Webb pointed out the anomaly in differentiating textile from non-textile laws. When the textile factories were first singled out for regulation, the cotton trade was

*Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 256.

† Bulletin of the International Labour Office. English Edition. Vol. II, No. 1, 1907. Page 38.

practically the only great industry employing women and children, and work therein was far more exacting than in any other industrial employment. But with the increase in the number of workers and intensity of work in non-textile employments, the distinction has become purely arbitrary. Its abandonment and the inclusion of non-textile occupations in the stricter statutes are only matters of time. Overtime

employment of all young persons under eighteen years has been prohibited since 1895. British legislation moves "slow, how slowly," but the best opinion in England holds that "the overtime exception is doomed."

4. ELASTIC LAWS IN THE UNITED STATES

England is thus slowly emerging from a past phase of industrial experience and legislation. Overtime favors to special interests are going out. But meanwhile, in the United States they are, to some extent, coming in.

This refers particularly to one industry whose quite unrecognized physical hardships have been dwelt upon in a previous chapter. Six states (four of them within the year 1911) have enacted laws which limit women's hours of labor, but in which the canneries are totally exempted. These states are California, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, and Washington. Unlike the British and Continental legislation, which at least attempts to fix the amount and extent of overtime allowed for perishable articles, the American laws. exempt the trade entirely from any restriction of hours.

So, too, in Connecticut, Louisiana, and New York, mercantile establishments are by statute exempted from all restrictions upon the working hours of women during the Christmas "rush." In these cases, women are totally deSimilar action has been taken in 1912 by Maryland, New Jersey, and

New York.

† In Connecticut between December 17th and 25th (provided employer gives seven holidays with pay); in Louisiana during twenty days before Christmas; in New York between December 18th and 24th, applying to girls between sixteen and twenty-one years. Similar exceptions previously existing in Massachusetts and Oregon were repealed, respectively, in 1904 and 1909. A similar exemption was enacted in New Jersey in 1912.

prived of protection when it is most urgently needed. But we need not here dwell at length upon such total exemptions, since they do not affect the enforcement of laws, which we are now considering. In these cases there is no law; hence there can be no enforcement. But these exemptions are the more deplorable because they mark a departure from previous usage in America.

In the United States the slower and more cumbrous British method of legislating for one industry at a time has been replaced by a more reasonable and inclusive system. We have seen that Massachusetts requires an earlier closing hour in textile mills than in any other occupation; but in no case has an American law restricting women's hours of labor been limited to any one special industry. Laws governing the hours of labor in manufacture have included all manufacture. Broadly speaking, the American usage has been to include all industries in the laws. With the recent exception of canneries and Christmas trade, the injurious custom of granting overtime to special industries has not obtained.

But other exceptions and laxities in American laws have been as disastrous for enforcement as the overtime provisions for special trades abroad. The most flagrant of these is the almost universal absence of a fixed legal closing hour, to which we have previously referred.

It is a startling fact that only three American states (and only one of them a great manufacturing state) have prohibited women's employment at night-a form of work which, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, all the civilized nations of Europe have striven to abolish by international treaty. Indeed, the laws of California, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin specifically state that work may be so arranged as to permit the employment of women for eight or ten hours at any time during the day or night. Consequently, some years ago an enterprising mill owner in the state of Washington attempted to employ the same women almost twenty consecutive hours in a mill (from noon on one day to near noon on the next day, with an intermission at midnight). He