The hearings on the law relative to mercantile establishments are held in Albany in a small room in the Capitol before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate and the Assembly Commission on Labor.  These hearings are very fiery.  The Support is represented by Attorney Mornay Williams, and Mrs. Nathan, Mrs. Kelley, Miss Stokes, Miss Sanford, and Miss Goldmark of the New York and National Consumers’ Leagues, and delegates from the Child Labor Committee, the Working-Girls’ Clubs, and the Woman’s Trade-Union League.  Both men and women speak fox the amendment.[11] The Support’s effort for legislation limiting hours has regularly been opposed by the Retail Dry-Goods Merchants’ Association, which yearly sends an influential delegation to Albany.

“These ladies have been coming here for sixteen years,” said one of the merchants, resentfully, last spring.  Looking around, and observing changes in the faces watching him among adherents of the Support, he added:  “Well, perhaps not the same ladies.  But they have come.”

“These ladies are professional agitators,” said another merchant at another hearing.  “Why, they even misled Mr. Roosevelt, when he was Governor, into recommending the passage of their bill.”

Such are some of the reasons offered by the opposition for not limiting women’s hours of labor in mercantile establishments.

Among the several common features of the experiences of these New York saleswomen, low wages, casual employment, heavy required expense in laundry and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training, absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, and an excess of seasonal work, the consideration of this last common condition is placed last because its consequences seem the most far-reaching.

Looking back at these common features in the lives of these average American working girls, one has a sudden sense that the phenomenon of the New York department stores represents a painful failure in democracy.  What will the aspect of the New York department stores be in the future?  For New York doubtless will long remain a port of merchandise, one of the most picturesque and most frequented harbors of the Seven Seas.  Doubtless many women still will work in its markets.  What will their chances in life be?

First, it may be trusted that the State law will not forever refuse to protect these women and their future, which is also the future of the community, from the danger of unlimited hours of labor.  Then, the fact that in a store in Cincinnati the efficiency of the saleswomen has been standardized and their wages raised, the fact that in a store in Boston the employees have become responsible factors in the business, and the fact that a school of salesmanship has been opened in New York seem to indicate the possibility of a day when salesmanship will become standardized and professional, as nursing has within the last century.  Further, it may be believed that saleswomen will not forever acquiesce in pursuing their trade in utterly machinal activity, without any common expression of their common position.