HOURS OF LABOR

255 Inis Far This

tive rest-day legislation yet passed in the United States. Both apply to factories and mercantile establishments only, but exclude janitors, watchmen, superintendents, foremen in charge, employees caring for live animals, maintaining fires or making repairs to boilers or machinery, and employees working not more than three hours on a seventh day in setting sponges in bakeries. In addition Massachusetts excludes a long list of such occupations as those connected with newspaper work, restaurants, drug stores, livery stables or garages, the sale or distribution of gas, electricity, or milk, or any emergency which could not reasonably have been expected, and New York excludes workers in milk and cheese plants with not more than seven employees. New York furthermore provides that if there are practical difficulties or unnecessary hardships in carrying out the law, the industrial commission may make variations "if the spirit of the act be observed and substantial justice done," and if the variations apply to all cases in which conditions are substantially the same.1 An earlier amendment giving the commissioner of labor power to exempt necessarily continuous processes in which no one was employed for more than eight hours a day was declared unconstitutional by the court of appeals on the ground that it constituted a delegation of legislative power. As an aid to enforcement employers in both states must post a schedule containing a list of employees who are to work on Sunday and designating the day of rest given them.

Investigations carried on by the American Association for Labor Legislation in these states after the law had been in force a year showed that its provisions were being generally observed and that many employees who had previously been obliged to work seven days a week were obtaining a weekly rest day without undue hardship to industry.

Women and children are also sometimes protected from seven-day labor through the provisions of those maximum hour laws which limit work to six days a week; other statutes seek to insure a weekly rest day by fixing weekly hours at six times daily hours or less. A few women's hour

1 New York, Laws 1915, C. 648.

2 People v. Klinck Packing Co., 214 N. Y. 121, 108 N. E. 278 (1915). American Labor Legislation Review, December, 1914, pp. 615-626.

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laws, however, leave the way open for seven-day labor by setting a daily but not a weekly limit, and one state, Arizona,1 invites it by making the weekly working period seven times the permitted daily hours.

It has been pointed out that Sunday laws applying to single occupations have sometimes been set aside as class legislation. General Sunday laws, however, have almost universally been upheld by the higher courts. Two distinct lines of reasoning have been followed. In the first half of the nineteenth century, beginning with a New York case in 1811, the constitutionality of the laws was seldom directly involved, but was assumed on religious grounds in connection with the settlement of such questions as the scope of their application, the validity of contracts made on Sunday, the definition of "works of necessity or charity," or the classification of employments. In 1844 in North Carolina a case first came up which was sustained on the grounds of the police power of the state. For the next twenty years both lines of reasoning found their way into court decisions, but since 1866 the state courts in sustaining these laws have relied almost entirely upon the police power, and all acts passed upon by the federal Supreme Court have been upheld on this same ground.3

Representative of the reasoning by which Sunday laws have been held a legitimate exercise of the police power is the opinion of the state supreme court in Hennington v. Georgia, later quoted by the United States Supreme Court:

"There can be no well-founded doubt of its being a police regulation, . . . for the frequent and total suspension of the toils, cares, and strain of mind or muscle incident to pursuing an occupation or common employment is beneficial to every individual, and incidentally to the community at large, the general public. Leisure is no less essential than labor to the well-being of man. Short intervals of leisure at stated

1 Arizona, Penal Code 1913, Sec. 717.

2 People v. Ruggles, 8 Johnson's Rep. (N. Y.) 290 (1811).

3 As late as 1915 a general Sunday law was attacked in Oregon as class legislation and as a violation of the fourteenth amendment, but was upheld by the state supreme court (State v. Nicholls, 77 Ore. 415, 151 Pac.473). Hennington v. State, 90 Ga. 396, 17 S. E. 1009 (1892); Hennington v. Georgia, 163 U. S. 299, 16 Sup. Ct. 1086 (1896).

periods reduce wear and tear, promote health, favor cleanliness, encourage social intercourse, afford opportunity for introspection and retrospection, and tend in a high degree to expand the thoughts and sympathies of people, enlarge their information, and elevate their morals.

"If a law which, in essential respects, betters for all the people the conditions, sanitary, social, and individual, under which their daily life is carried on and which contributes to insure for each, even against his own will, his minimum allowance of leisure, cannot be rightfully classed as a police regulation, it would be difficult to imagine any law that could."

The new one-day-rest-in-seven laws have been so recently passed that in only one state has a test case reached a higher court. A priori it would seem that these laws could be sustained as police power regulations as the Sunday laws have been, and in the main such a position was taken by the New York State Court of Appeals on February 5, 1915. The court said: "Can we say that the provision for a full day of rest in seven for such employees is so extravagant and unreasonable, so disconnected with the probable promotion of health and welfare, that its enactment is beyond the jurisdiction of the legislature? . . . We have no power of decision of the question whether it is the wisest and best way to offset these conditions and to give to employees the protection which they need, even if we had any doubt on that subject. Our only inquiry must be whether the provision on its face seems reasonable, fair, and appropriate, and whether it can fairly be believed that its natural consequences will be in the direction of the betterment of public health and welfare, and therefore that it is one which the state for its protection and advantage may enact and enforce." The classifications made by the act have likewise been upheld, as meeting the actual conditions of modern industrial life. Its limitation to employees of factories and mercantile establishments was reasonable because "We know as a matter of common observation that such labor is generally indoors and imposes that greater burden on health which comes from confinement

1 People v. Klinck Packing Co., 214 N. Y. 121, 108 N. E. 278 (1915).

many times accompanied by crowded conditions and impure air." The exemption of dairies, creameries, and similar plants employing not more than seven workers was also reasonable, because of the perishable nature of the product, the heavier burden of the necessary increase in the force of a small establishment, and because of the closer personal relation between employer and employee and lessened strain in such small establishments. The power given to the commissioner of labor to exempt continuous industries in which daily hours were not more than eight, was, however, held to be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. Thus the attitude of the courts is apparently favorable to the extension of laws securing industrial workers a weekly day of rest.

(5) Annual Vacations

The average salaried worker would consider himself ill-used if he failed to receive an annual paid vacation of two weeks or more. But ordinarily no such provision is made for the wage-earner. In this respect employees of state and federal governments fare better than workers in private employment. About half a dozen states have laws providing annual vacations for several classes of employees. Representative of these is the California statute, which allows an annual vacation of fifteen days with pay to all regular employees of state hospitals, state commissions and boards, and the state printing-office. The federal government likewise provides annual paid leaves of absence for several classes of employees, including the employees of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the Government Printing Office, workers in navyyards, gun factories and arsenals, and railway postal clerks. In Massachusetts in 1914 an act providing a fortnight's paid vacation for laborers employed by cities and towns was submitted to popular vote and accepted by over half of the cities and towns of the commonwealth. Another method some

In May, 1915, the Milk Wagon Drivers' Union of Chicago signed an agreement with their employers which included a provision for two weeks' annual vacation with pay. This is said to be the first such provision in a signed trade agreement.

2 California, Laws 1909, C. 250, Sec. I.

times used to secure vacations to city employees is that of inserting such provisions in city charters. For example, the New York City charter gives executive heads at their discretion power to grant employees annual vacations of not less than one week, but per diem employees may not be given more than two weeks.

Laws requiring annual vacations have in this country covered only public employment, but in Europe they have sometimes been extended to private industry as well. Thus in the canton of Berne, Switzerland, every woman who has been employed on time rates in the same business for more than one year must be given six consecutive holidays with pay, after the second year's work eight holidays, after the third year ten days, and after the fourth year twelve days. Another method of providing vacations sometimes used abroad is the insertion of labor clauses in public service franchises. For instance, the subway franchise in Paris requires that all employees be given ten days' vacation annually with pay.

The foregoing discussion indicates that legal regulation of the working hours and of the rest periods for the different classes of employees in America has tended toward uniform provisions, the same limitations usually being applied to all industries covered by the law. In European countries, on the other hand, in addition to broad maximum and minimum regulations, frequent use is made of the method of determining the length of the work and rest periods in accordance with the special hazards of each industry or occupation. Scientific adjustment of hours of labor requires thorough and often continued investigations of actual conditions, and should combine the practical knowledge of workers and employers with the technical knowledge of experts. In many occupations dusts and gases, poisons, or extreme temperatures, make it safe to work consecutively for only short periods. The presence in America of hazardous industries fraught with danger to the life and health of thousands of employees working long hours and frequently seven days a week, but as yet unregu

'The strike in the oil plants of Bayonne, N. J., for instance, during the summer of 1915, brought to public knowledge the work of the stillcleaners who must toil in a temperature of 209° F. cleaning the huge vats in which oil is refined,