The importance of this decision cannot be overestimated.  On it hangs the validity of nearly all the laws which have been passed in the United States for the protection of women workers.  If the Oregon law had been declared unconstitutional, laws in twenty States, or practically all the States where women work in factories, would have been in perpetual danger, and the United States might easily have sunk to a position occupied now by no leading country in Europe.

Great Britain has had protective legislation for women workers since 1844.  In 1847 the labor of women in English textile mills was limited to ten hours a day, the period we are now worrying about, as being possibly contrary to our Constitution.  France, within the past five years, has established a ten-hour day, broken by one hour of rest.  Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Austria, Italy, limit the hours of women’s labor.  In several countries there are special provisions giving extra time off to women who have household responsibilities.  What would our Constitution-bound law makers say to such a proposition, if any one had the hardihood to suggest it?

If this law had not been upheld by the United States Supreme Court the women of no State could have hoped to secure further legislation for women workers.  As it is, women in many States are preparing to establish what is now known as “The Oregon Standard,” that is, a ten-hour day for all working women.

Nothing in connection with the woman movement is more significant, certainly nothing was more unexpected, than the voluntary abandonment, on the part of women, of class prejudice and class distinctions.  Where formerly the interest of the leisured woman in her wage-earning sisters was of a sentimental or philanthropic character, it has become practical and democratic.

The Young Women’s Christian Association has had an industrial department, which up to a recent period concerned itself merely with the spiritual welfare of working girls.  Prayer meetings in factories, clubs, and classes in the Association headquarters, working-girls’ boarding homes, and other philanthropic efforts were the limits of the Association’s activities.  The entire policy has changed of late, and under the capable direction of Miss Annie Marian MacLean, of Brooklyn, New York, the industrial department of the Association is doing scientific investigation of labor conditions of women.

In a cracker factory I once saw a paid worker in the Young Women’s Christian Association pause above a young girl lying on the floor, crimson with fever, and apparently in the throes of a serious illness.  With angelic pity on her face the Association worker stooped and slipped a tract into the sick girl’s hand.  The kind of industrial secretary the Association now employs would send for an ambulance and see that the girl had the best of hospital care.  She would inquire whether the girl’s illness was caused by the conditions under which she worked, and she would know if it were possible to have those conditions changed.