Rhode Island was the first state to legislate in 1913 regarding women’s
hours of work. The law had previously failed to provide any protection
for women employed in stores. It had prohibited more than fifty-six
hours’ work in one week in manufacturing and mechanical establishments,
but it allowed more than ten hours’ work in one day for various causes.
The new law fixes a flat ten-hour day and fifty-four-hour week for all
women employed in any “factory, manufacturing, mechanical, business or
mercantile establishment.”
Several measures were presented to the Legislature dealing with this
subject. The bill as passed was introduced as a substitute, at the
request of Chief Factory Inspector J. Ellery Hudson. It was strongly
supported at the hearings before the Legislature by the Consumers’
League of Rhode Island, by the representatives of the labor unions,
women’s clubs, and the Rhode Island Medical Society. The removal of the
former exceptions in the law is as great a gain as the reduction of
hours and the inclusion of mercantile houses. The bill marks a notable
advance in Rhode Island.
Another important bill recently passed through effective concerted
action was in Delaware, where no law was ever before enacted to limit
women’s hours of labor. Two years ago the Consumers’ League of Delaware
carried on a campaign for a ten-hour bill. This measure passed the
Legislature, but was amended almost beyond recognition in the process,
and in the end it was not signed by the governor. This year a ten-hour
law committee of the Consumers’ League was formed of which Margaret H.
Shearman has been chairman. In spite of bitter opposition, a bill was
carried through, providing for a ten-hour day and a fifty-five-hour
week. Success followed a campaign of unusual vigor, conducted for months
throughout the state. The new law includes women employed in many
occupations—“in any mercantile, mechanical or manufacturing
establishment; laundry, baking or printing establishment; telephone and
telegraph office or exchange.” Women employed in canning establishments
are exempted. Many other exceptions and amendments were pressed, but
only one concession was made to secure the passage of the bill. This
allows one working day of twelve hours each week.
In Texas the Legislature proved more compliant to the powerful lobby
which opposed the passage of the first woman’s labor law in that state.
Cotton-mill owners, raising the familiar cry that their industry would
be ruined, succeeded in having themselves wholly excluded from the new
act. They may therefore continue to employ their women workers as long
as they choose, while the only manufacturers prohibited from employing
women more than ten hours in one day and fifty-four hours in one week
are those engaged in the garment trades!
According to the census of 1910 about 4,000 women are employed in the
factories in Texas. Textiles are not separately listed, but it is fair
to surmise that a small minority of the 4,000 women are garment workers
covered by the new law, and that the great majority are employed in the
cotton mills, without any legal limitation of hours.
Besides garment workers, the new law includes women employed in any
“printing office, dressmaking or millinery establishment, hotel,
restaurant or theater, telegraph or telephone office.” Laundry owners
are allowed to employ women eleven hours in twenty-four, provided that
“time and a half” is paid for work done in excess of ten hours. A
comment by the Texas commissioner of labor on the new law is worth
quoting: “Will not attempt to apologize for the same,” he writes, “but
will admit it is not much.”
In New York a new law has been enacted which is of national as well as
state importance. This measure was unanimously recommended by the New
York State Factory Investigating Commission after careful investigation.
It prohibits the employment of women at night in manufacture, between 10
P. M. and 6 A. M. It brings the Empire State with its 300,000 women
employed in manufacture up to the level of the fourteen civilized
nations of Europe which have by international treaty abolished the night
work of women in factories.
Hitherto only three states, Massachusetts, Indiana and Nebraska, have
enacted in their statutes the principle of assuring to working women a
fixed period of rest at night—a principle adopted by England as long ago
as 1847 in the first factory legislation.
In this country, usage has so blunted our perception of the effects of
work carried on to midnight or all night, that the establishment of a
legal closing hour is one of the last steps taken even by progressive
states. Yet in Massachusetts 10 P. M. has been the legal closing hour in
factories for almost twenty-five years, and the great textile trade has
flourished with an even earlier closing hour for women, set by law at 6
P. M. since 1907.
In recommending the enactment of the nightwork bill, the Factory
Investigating Commission carefully considered the adverse opinion of the
New York Court of Appeals, which five years ago, in the Williams case,
declared unconstitutional a similar law prohibiting the night work of
women. The commission concluded that two new circumstances justified the
enactment of a new law and the reargument of the principle at stake
before the highest court of New York—the only court of last resort which
has rendered a decision on this subject.
These two circumstances are, first, the decision of the Supreme Court of
the United States upholding the Oregon ten-hour law for women, handed
down since the decision in the Williams case was rendered; and second,
the existence of many “facts of common knowledge” regarding the
physical, moral and economic effects of night work, facts which were not
brought to the attention of the New York Court of Appeals when it
decided that Katie Mead was not likely to be injured by working at 10.20
P. M. in a given occupation.
When the new case comes up for argument it is reasonable to hope that
the New York court will follow the lead of the Supreme Court of the
United States in taking “judicial cognizance” of those ascertained facts
which go far beyond the single case at bar, and present to the court the
world’s experience as to legislation of this character.