Committee, unites with the testimony of enlightened employers in calling such a period too long. Frequently the existing law fails to regulate the new occupations which women have entered since the war. In New York state in 1918, when women were frequently working fifteen hours a day on elevators and twelve and fourteen on streetcars, the legislature failed to pass conservative bills to limit hours in these occupations. Throughout the United States, scientific attention to such matters as the regulation of weight lifting and the prohibition of especially unsuitable employments has hardly begun. Plans for the careful demobilization of women war workers, to prevent large scale unemployment and suffering, are tardy in making their appearance. No state has yet ventured on any plan of maternity insurance to aid the hard-pressed working mother, or of general health insurance to provide an income during illness and proper medical care for all women workers.

Every one of the forty-three state legislatures meeting in 1919, therefore, has an opportunity to aid the efficiency of the nation and contribute to the welfare of its people by raising and extending the legal standards for the protection of women workers. Such action is an essential part of the constructive effort needed in the reconstruction period on which we are now entering.

Regulation of Women's Working Hours in the United States

One of the most widespread forms of protective labor legislation in the United States is the limitation of working hours for women. Statutes of this kind are found in some form in forty-three out of the forty-eight states, Porto Rico and the District of Columbia. At the close of 1918 they were lacking in only the five states of Alabama, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, and West Virginia.

Constitutionality of prevailing legal restrictions on women's hours has been established in America since 1908, when the United States Supreme Court, in the famous case of Muller v. Oregon, affirmed the right of the state to limit women's daily hours to ten as a health measure-" the physical well-being of women becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race." The same court in 1915 sustained the legality of the eight-hour day for women.1 A test case on the prohibition of night work has not reached the United States Supreme Court, but such a measure has been upheld by the highest court of New York state. In the whole field, therefore, the United States is free to act with little fear of constitutional restraint.

The older and more common method of limiting hours is by incorporating all the details in a definite statute passed by the legislature. In the interests of better-considered legislation, half-a-dozen states have supplemented this by the industrial commission method. Under the latter plan the legislature lays down the general principle that women may not work for excessive or harmful periods, and empowers a commission to fix working hours consistent with the principle. Industrial commission regulations may be confined to improvements over standards of the statute law, as in California; they may supersede the statute limitations, as in Wisconsin; or they may be the only restrictions in existence, as in Kansas.

OCCUPATIONS COVERED

Women in stores and factories are those most often protected by hour legislation. Every state having a daily hours law, except

'Miller v. Wilson, 236 U. S. 273 (1915).

Arizona and Georgia, covers all manufacturing and mechanical trades, and only the four states of Georgia, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Vermont fail to include mercantile establishments. In addition to these general classifications, such places as bakeries, laundries, printing and dressmaking establishments are not infrequently included in the laws by name.

The newer laws show a growing tendency to embrace large additional groups of occupations. In 1918 six states and Porto Rico limited women's working hours in all gainful employments, with certain specific exceptions. Five states had granted similar broad powers of regulation to industrial commissions. Most state laws are as yet less inclusive, and merely make additions to the list of occupations in which hours are limited. The main additional classes of work thus covered are hotels or restaurants in twenty-two states, telephone or telegraph offices in fifteen, express and transportation companies in eleven, offices or "business" in eight, and places of amusement in seven.

Prominent among the occupations specially excepted from hour laws is the canning industry, which is excluded in seventeen states. Nurses are also specifically excluded by a few laws. Small communities and small establishments are occasionally exempted. No regulation of hours in domestic service is attempted, and hours in farm work are apparently limited only in California, Porto Rico, and Texas.

Entrance of women into new occupations under stress of war demands is reflected in certain recent additions to the occupations covered by hour laws. The inclusion in 1918 of elevator operators under the Massachusetts law, of women messengers in New York, and stringent regulation of street car employment by the Wisconsin Industrial Commission are examples.

STANDARDS OF DAILY AND WEEKLY HOURS

Every state women's hour law (except those in Connecticut, Maine, and Minnesota for stores and certain allied employments, New York for messenger service, and North Carolina for manufacturing) sets a limit on daily working hours. As yet the ten-hour day, found in sixteen states, is the most frequent. The eight- and nine-hour day have made important gains within the last few years, however, the former being in force in six western states, the District of Columbia, and Porto Rico, and the latter in thirteen states, includ

ing the important industrial areas of New York, Ohio, and Missouri. Five states have daily limits of ten and a quarter to twelve hours.

All except seven states also fix maximum weekly hours of work for women, which vary all the way from forty-eight to sixty hours. In a dozen states having a working day of ten hours or more, the working week is less than sixty hours, which insures one short day weekly. Eight states establish a six-day working week by statute law, and three states for large groups of occupations by industrial commission rulings. Women may legally work as much as seventy hours a week in Virginia and Illinois, which have a ten-hour day without either a weekly or a six-day limit.

Awards by industrial commissions show a considerably greater variety of standards for different occupations than do the statute laws. The chief variation in the latter is the occasional appearance of a less severe restriction on mercantile establishments and certain allied occupations than on factories. But in California, Kansas, and Oregon, where hour awards by industrial commissions are most numerous, somewhat different standards, intended to meet the special strain or distinctive conditions of the industry, are adopted for each of six or eight different groups.

OVERTIME

The tendency of recent hour legislation is to do away with permitted overtime, the existence of which generally makes an hour law more difficult of enforcement. Twenty states do not legalize overtime under any circumstances. Five states allow some overtime on one or more days weekly, provided maximum weekly hours are not exceeded. This makes possible one short working day weekly, for instance, a Saturday half-holiday. Six states permit some overtime in stores, either one day weekly or for a few days before Christmas. Four states, instead of exempting canneries from all hour regulation, allow them to run overtime under certain conditions. Four states arrange for the making up of time lost by stoppage of machinery or other accident, and the same number grant a rather general permission to some or all industries to work overtime in "emergencies." The newest development in legalized overtime is illustrated by the action of the California, Kansas, and Wisconsin industrial commissions, which have permitted overtime in certain occupations in emergencies, provided higher wage-rates are paid for work beyond the usual hours.