REASONS FOR PROTECTING WOMEN WORKERS The brief included a short and interesting chapter, containing a number of things the League had collected on the subject of laundries.  Supreme Court judges cannot be expected to know that laundry work is classed by experts among the dangerous trades.  That washing clothes, from a simple home or backyard occupation, has been transformed into a highly-organized factory trade full of complicated and often extremely dangerous machinery; that the atmosphere of a steam laundry is more conducive to tuberculosis and the other occupational diseases than cotton mills; that the work in laundries, being irregular, is conducive to a general low state of morals; that, on the whole, women should not be required to spend more time than necessary in laundries; all this was set forth.

Medical testimony showed the physical differences between men and women; the lesser power of women to endure long hours of standing; the heightened susceptibility of women to industrial poisons—­lead, naphtha, and the like.  A long chapter of testimony on the effect of child-bearing in communities where the women had toiled long hours before marriage, or afterwards, was included.

The testimony of factory inspectors, of industrial experts, of employers in England, Germany, France, America, revealed the bad effect of long hours on women’s safety, both physical and moral.  It revealed the good effect, on the individual health, home life, and general welfare, of short hours of labor.

Nor was the business aspect of the case neglected.  That people accomplish as much in an eight-hour day as in a twelve-hour day has actually been demonstrated.  The brief stated, for one instance, the experience of a bicycle factory in Massachusetts.

In this place young women were employed to sort the ball bearings which went into the machines.  They did this by touch, and no girl was of use to the firm unless her touch was very sensitive and very sure.  The head of this firm became convinced that the work done late in the afternoon was of inferior quality, and he tried the experiment of cutting the hours from ten to nine.  The work was done on piece wages, and the girls at first protested against the nine-hour day, fearing that their pay envelopes would suffer.  To their astonishment they earned as much in nine hours as they had in ten.  In time the employer cut the working day down to eight hours and a half, and in addition gave the girls ten-minute rests twice a day.  Still they earned their full wages, and they continued to earn full wages after the day became eight hours long.  The employer testified before the United States Industrial Commission of 1900 that he believed he could successfully shorten the day to seven hours and a half and get the same amount of work accomplished.

What can you do against testimony like that?  The Consumers’ League convinced the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Oregon ten-hour law was upheld.