Further, in one store the management especially advises the saleswomen to be seated at every moment when the presence of a customer does not require her to stand.  But the saleswoman’s inability to attract possible customers while she is seated still keeps her standing, in order not to diminish her sales.

Curiously enough, it would seem that the shopping public of a nation professedly democratic will not buy so much as a spool of thread from a seated woman.  There is, of course, much work for women[7]—­such as ironing for instance—­in which standing is generally considered absolutely necessary.  Salesmanship is not work of this character.  It is primarily custom that demands the constant standing seen in the stores; and, until shoppers establish a habit of buying of shop-girls who are seated, and the stores provide enough seats for all saleswomen and permit them to sell when seated, the present system of undermining the normal health of women clerks will continue unchecked.

The New York State law in regard to the work of the younger women (minors)—­in mercantile establishments is as follows:—­

     Hours of Labor of Minors[8]

No female employee between sixteen and twenty-one years of age shall be required, permitted, or suffered to work in or in connection with any mercantile establishment more than sixty hours in any one week; or more than ten hours in any one day, unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day of some one day of the week; or before seven o’clock in the morning or after ten o’clock in the evening of any day. This section does not apply to the employment of persons sixteen years of age or upward, between the eighteenth day of December and the following twenty-fourth day of December, both inclusive.[9]

That is to say, that, for the holiday season, the time of all others when it might seem wise and natural to protect the health of the younger women working in the great metropolitan markets, for that season, of all others, the State specifically provides that the strength of its youth is to have no legal safeguard and may be subjected to labor without limit.

Substantially, all the present legal protection for workers in the stores was obtained in 1896, after the investigation of mercantile establishments conducted in 1895 by the Rinehart Commission.[10] Ever since, an annual attempt has been made to perfect the present law and to secure its enforcement, which had been left in the hands of the local Boards of Health, and was practically inoperative until 1908.  Enforcement was then transferred to the Labor Commissioner, and has since that time been actively maintained.