without penalties; so as the same be not repugnant to this constitution, as they shall judge to be for the good and welfare of the Commonwealth, and for the governing thereof."

Many states have since followed the example of Massachusetts, but none has gone beyond it. Indeed, so far as is known to the writer, no other state has followed the important improvements incorporated in the Massachusetts statute since its establishment in 1876 by the decision of the Supreme Court. By subsequent amendments the hours of labor of women engaged in manufacture were reduced to fifty-eight in one week, and the same restriction extended, in 1900, to the hours of labor of women engaged in commerce, although an exemption covering the month of December temporarily weakened this extension compared with the protection afforded to women engaged in manufacture. In 1904, however, the exemption covering work in December was repealed, and women now stand on the same footing in regard to daily leisure, whether they are employed in manufacture or in commerce.

New York waited until 1886 before restricting by statute the hours of labor of women and children; and even then provided only for women under the age of twenty-one years, waiting until 1899, after the promulgation of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Holden vs. Hardy, February, 1898, before extending the restriction to women of all ages engaged in manufacture.

The imperfect and unequal recognition of the

right to leisure is well illustrated by the present statutory provision of New York. There children under the age of sixteen years cannot legally be employed longer than nine hours in one day and fiftyfour hours in one week. For children engaged in manufacture, the working day must end at nine o'clock at night, but children engaged in commerce may work until ten. Women of all ages are nominally prohibited from working longer in manufacture than ten hours in one day and sixty hours in one week, but this prohibition is rendered virtually nugatory by the words "except for the purpose of making a shorter working day on the last day of the week," in consequence of which the factory inspectors find the utmost difficulty in proving any given violation of the whole provision. Women employed in commerce enjoy, however, not even this defective statutory provision after reaching the age of twenty-one years. And for girls between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one years it is expressly permitted that they may work, without limitation of the length of the working day, from December 15 to January 1, i. e., during the fortnight in all the year in which they are most in need of a definite prohibition of all work after six o'clock at night.

Here are four divisions of the protected workers, all having different provisions as to their degree of statutory leisure: Children under sixteen years of age in manufacture, and children of the same age in commerce; women under the age of twenty-one years in commerce, and women of all ages in manufacture. And each of the two latter classes is sub

ject to exceptions in the statute which very seriously diminish its face value.

The Illinois Decision of 1895; (Ritchie vs. the People.) In 1893 the legislature of Illinois enacted a statute restricting the work of women and girls engaged in manufacture to eight hours in one day and forty-eight hours in one week, and provided for the enforcement of the law by inspectors whose duty it was to prosecute all violations of the statute. But in May, 1895, this law was pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Illinois, and since that date there has been no restriction whatever upon the hours of labor of women in that state. Because it is still in force in Illinois, depriving thousands of women and young girls of all statutory protection in the enjoyment of their right to daily leisure, this decision is still of importance, and is, therefore, printed in the appendix.

At the time of the rendering of the Illinois decision, the writer, as the responsible head of the state department of factory inspection, charged with the duty of enforcing the eight hours law, incorporated in the next following annual report of the department some comments upon the decision, which have remained buried in the obscurity of an official report. Time has, however, verified in so hope-inspiring a manner some of the statements there made that it seems worth while to reproduce them after the lapse of ten years:

"In annulling this section, the ground taken by the court, namely that regulation of the hours of labor is in excess of the powers of the legislature is

of curious interest in contrast with the established policy of those states and nations in which this power to regulate is no longer in question, where the principle is accepted and acted upon that the care of the health of the factory employee is a legitimate subject of legislation.

"In France, Germany and every other continental country, including Russia, and in the more progressive states of this country, legislative regulation of the hours of labor has been found an effective measure for the protection of the health of women and children employed in factories and workshops. In England, the principle of the regulation of the hours of work for women and children has been established for more than two generations and the regeneration of the working-class in that country, from the degradation in which it was sunk in 1844, is generally attributed to the factory acts, and especially to this important feature of them.

"In contrast with the beneficent policy which has been followed during the past half-century in that greatest manufacturing country of the world, the Supreme Court of Illinois, in the year 1895, has rendered its decision upon grounds which were advanced and rejected in the English parliament in the fifties.

"The new feature introduced into the body of American legal precedent by this decision is the assumption that it is not exclusively a matter of the constitution of Illinois. The state constitution could be altered, so that thereafter the hours of labor could be regulated by legislative enactment, as

in the older industrial communities. The court, however, makes the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States the basis of its decision. If this position were correct, all effort for legislative restriction of the working day would be wasted, since there is no prospect of change in the Constitution of the United States.

"Happily the weight of precedent is not on the side of the Illinois court; the precedents are in the other direction. In Massachusetts, for twenty years past, the principle has been established by the Supreme Court that the hours of labor of women and children may be regulated by statute. The Massachusetts precedent has had such weight that no case has been carried to the Court of Appeals in New York. The constitutionality of its ten hours law, though suits have been brought under it, has never been disputed.

"It remained for the Supreme Court of Illinois to discover that the amendment to the Constitution of the United States passed for the purpose of guaranteeing the negro from oppression, has become an insuperable obstacle to the protection of women and children. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that this unique interpretation of the fourteenth amendment will be permanently maintained, even in Illinois.

"To the working people of the state, the action of the Supreme Court is a calamity, for it must never be forgotten, in discussing the legislative restriction of the hours of labor, that this is not a question between the day of eight hours and the day of ten. In practise the question is between an unlimited work