The slow and ineffectual steps towards the establishment of an adequate force for mercantile inspection, in a state in which the principle of state inspection is so long established and clearly recognized as in New York, are obviously due to the absence of a voting constituency behind the demand for such inspection.

Because, in all great industrial states, women are disfranchised, except for certain strictly limited powers in connection with educational affairs, the industrial disadvantages of the minor wage-earners are aggravated by this powerlessness of the adult workingwomen to make the needs of the whole class felt, by those methods which are slowly and gradually but surely improving the position of workingmen; and are no less aggravated by the equal political impotence of those other women who are the natural friends and protectors of the young workers,-the women of wealth, leisure, intelligence, and philanthropic interest.

It has been made sufficiently clear in the foregoing chapters that the exertions of the Retail Clerks' Protective Association, the Working Women's Societies, the Consumers' League, and Church Association for Improving the Condition of Labor, and the League of Women Workers have availed little for changing industrial conditions affecting workingwomen and children compared with what voting workingmen have been able to do for themselves.

The burden of the tale of this book is the difficulty of enforcing legislation on behalf of children and minor workers. Their position is zero minus. The

element which, under normal conditions, is primarily concerned with their interests consists of the adult wage-earning women, the mothers and the teachers, with philanthropic women of education and leisure. So long as these either shirk the duty of securing and using the opportunity to vote, or are debarred from doing so, the difficulty of enforcement of protective laws must continue.

The exceptional disadvantage attaching to the position of minor working girls is such as to call for humane exertion on the part of all who can in any way contribute to their welfare. And the response is found in the rapidly growing series of philanthropic undertakings of which working girls are the objects. While the Young Men's Christian Associations aim to enhance the efficiency of their beneficiaries, by furnishing instruction and facilities for systematic exercise, bathing and wholesome recreation, the corresponding organization dealing with minor working-girls provides, not only these aids to efficiency, but a variety of sustaining and curative measures in addition. What is the meaning of the homes for convalescent working-girls which are springing up in so many directions? Is it not that working-girls are being worn out and used up at a rate such that no savings of their own brief working period could possibly provide for their needs? And these homes are without exception overcrowded (or burdened with waiting-lists) largely by sufferers from nervous prostration or pelvic disorders induced by long hours of work and needless standing arbitrarily imposed in connection with their work.

Boarding houses for working girls, furnishing board at four and five dollars a week and supplying a modicum of comforts paid for by philanthropic subscribers, exist in a score of states. Why all this provision for which nothing corresponding is asked on behalf of young men? Is it not due to the general feeling that the morals of working-girls must be buttressed, their wages eked out in the interest of society itself? Rescue homes and shelters tell their own chapter of the story of insufficient pay coupled with overwork and temptation; and this chapter is supplemented by the rapid growth of foundling asylums, and committees for finding places in friendly families for mothers with one infant each.

It may be many years before any of the efforts now made on behalf of working-girls can be safely relaxed. But why should all this effort be confined, in their case more than in that of young workingmen and boys, to the forms of philanthropy? Why should not effort on their behalf go forward on two feet, the philanthropic and the political together, as the movement of workingmen goes forward? Why should it limp haltingly along upon the one foot of philanthropy? Is it not quite possible that, with the extension of political power to all the women in the community, such improvement in the conditions of employment must result that the minor wage-earners will be more nearly self-supporting, less often placed in the humiliating position of working and yet being objects of charity? For any body of wage-earners to be disfranchised is to be placed at an intolerable disadvantage in all matters of legislation.

It has been shown that in states in which women have been admitted to the electorate, certain substantial advantages have accrued to the schools and the children. It is entirely reasonable to infer that with a farther extension of the franchise to women, a similar gradual improvement in the lot of the minor wage-earners will come about, and that these improvements cannot be achieved so promptly or so lastingly in any other way.

While leisure has been increasing in the class of prosperous, home-keeping women, the need of their help, sympathy and protection has been growing among the young workers. Since the leisure of prosperous women is due largely to the labor of young wage-workers (who are engaged chiefly in the food and garment trades, the textile industries. and that retail commerce which lives by the patronage of home-keeping women), it behooves the fortunate to assume their full share of the duty of making and enforcing laws for the protection of these young wage-workers. But this they can do only when they perform all the duties of citizenship, voting and serving on public boards and commissions when elected or appointed to them. It is because women are less under the stress of competitive business, because they do, in fact, represent children and youth, that their vote is needed.

One alleged form of philanthropic work in behalf of working girls would certainly go out of existence if women were added to the electorate, namely those so-called reformatory institutions under sectarian management in which for years at a stretch girls are

detained without trial, kept at work for the benefit of the institution or of the ecclesiastical organization under whose auspices it is conducted. Only the members of a disfranchised class can be subjected to treatment such as this.

Right of Women to a Share in the Enactment of Marriage and Divorce Laws.—A subject of the highest ethical importance is kept effectively under discussion by the unwearied efforts of the Divorce Reform League to obtain the enactment by Congress of a uniform law dealing with marriage and divorce throughout the Republic. No other law touches in the same manner the welfare of every man, woman and child in the nation, as the law governing marriage and divorce. No other law, therefore, so peremptorily requires the assent of every citizen. Men and women are alike affected by the legal basis of family life; and since the points of view from which the subject is approached by men and women are fundamentally different, that law alone can be an essentially just and righteous one which is so framed as to satisfy the needs of both men and women and to rest upon their agreement.

For a federal law, at the present time, there is no machinery by which the assent of women can be obtained. Such a law, therefore, if enacted while the present suffrage restrictions remain, must be the product of the will of far less than half of the adults whom it would affect. However wise the measure recommended might appear in the abstract to be, the manner of its adoption would constitute an intolerable injustice.