The process of reasoning by which learned judges reach the conclusion that an eight-hour day for men may be decreed without depriving anybody of his constitutional rights, and at the same time rule that women would be outrageously wronged by having their working hours limited, may appear obscure.

The explanation is, after all, simple.  The learned judges are men, and they know something—­not much, but still something—­about the men of the working classes.  They know, for example, something about the conditions under which coal miners work, and they can see that it is contrary to public interests that men should toil underground, at arduous labor, twelve hours a day.  Accidents result with painful frequency, and these are bad things,—­bad for miners and mine owners alike.  They are bad for the whole community.  Therefore the regulation of miners’ hours of labor comes legitimately under the police powers of the law.

The learned judges, I say this with all due respect, do not know anything about working women.  Their own words prove it.  The texts of their decisions, denying the constitutionality of protective measures, are amazing in the ignorance they display,—­ignorance of industrial conditions surrounding women; ignorance of the physical effects of certain kinds of labor on young girls; ignorance of the effect of women’s arduous toil on the birth rate; ignorance of moral conditions in trades which involve night work; ignorance of the injury to the home resulting from the sweated labor of tenement women.  In brief, the learned judges, when they write opinions involving the health, the happiness, the very lives of women workers, might be writing about the inhabitants of another planet, so little knowledge do they display of the real facts.

We have seen how the women of the Consumers’ League taught the United States Supreme Court something about working women; showed them a few of the calamities resulting from the unrestricted labor of women and immature girls.  The Supreme Court’s decision forever abolished the old fallacy that the American Constitution forbids protective legislation for women workers.  It remains for women’s organizations in the various States to educate local courts up to the knowledge that community interest demands protective legislation.

Following the decision of the Supreme Court in the Oregon case, which flatly contradicted the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, the working women of Illinois began their educational campaign.  They had now, for the first time, a fighting chance to secure the restoration of their shortened work day.  The women of fifteen organized trades in the city of Chicago determined to take that chance.

The women first appealed to the Industrial Commission, appointed early in 1908 by Governor Dineen, to investigate the need of protective legislation for workers, men and women alike.

The women were given a courteous hearing, but were told frankly that limited hours of work for women was not one of protective measures to be recommended by the Commission.