What eight million women want

t upward: "Corsets, millinery, muslin underwear, shirt-waists, coats and suits, infants' wear, and ladies' shoes, second floor; no ma'am, carpets and rugs on the third floor; this c

ains in marked-down summer frocks, women. Up under the roof, posting ledgers, auditing accounts, attending to all the complex bookkeeping of a great metropolitan department store, women. Behind most of the counters on all the floors between, women. At every cashier's desk, at the wrappers' desks, running back and for

nanalyzed fact. You grasp it as an intellectual abstraction, without much appreciation of its human significance. The mere reading

pausing at the hour of six at the junction of any city's great industrial arteries, you get a full realization of the change. Of the pushing, jostling, clamoring mob, which the sidewalks are much too narrow to contain, observe the preponderance of girls. From factory, office, and department

nor holidays in a telephone exchange. The city could not get along for one single minute in one single hour of the twenty-four without the telephone girl. Her hands move quickly over the face of the switch board, picking up long, silk-wound wires, reac

m the telephone exchanges? Men could not take their places. That e

ustry, go back to the department sto

. The makers of store furniture planned counters, shelves, and seats to suit her stature. Buyers of goods know th

DEMAND O

ncome, and that point has been somewhat in question lately, there is no doubt at all as to who spen

with easy-chairs and couches; plenty of little desks with handsome stationery where the customer may write notes; here, and in the retiring-room adjoining, are uniformed maids to offer service. But

the conduct of modern business. Not unnaturally it was in the department store that they b

ones with whom it was concerned were obliged to smile. An obscure group of women, calling themselves the Working Wome

t-shop standard. They said that a foreign woman in a downtown garment shop could earn seven dolla

hat sanitary conditions in the cloak rooms and lunch rooms of some of the stores were such as to endanger health and life. They said that the whole situation was so bad that no clerk

king-girl, and in a way she is justified. The exceptionally intelligent department-store clerk has one chance in a thousand of rising to the well-paid, semi-professional post of buyer. Also the exceptionally attractive girl has possibly one cha

working women in New York City was born a movement which has spread beyond the Atlantic Ocean, which has effected legislation in

rested in the Working Women's Society. They investigated the charges brought against the de

called a large mass meeting in Chickering Hall. Mrs. Nathan had a constructive plan fo

ompensation, sooner or later the night work would cease. A few stores, said Mrs. Nathan, maintained a standard above the average. It was within the power of the wom

y. We can make and publish a list of all the shops where employees receive fair treatment, and we can agree to patronize only those s

eeting the committee appointed to co-operate with the Working Women's Society in preparing its list of fair

RS' LEAGUE

ill more disappointing was the indifference of the other firms to their outcast position. Far from evincing a desire to earn a place on the White List,

one merchant. "Do you think they will pass up anythi

est weapon. What was the astonishment of the merchants when the League framed, and caused to be introduced into the New York Assembly, a bill known as the Mercantile Employers' Bill, to re

first introduced, the bill struggled through the lower House. In spite of powerful commercial influences the bill was reported in the Senate, and some of t

d-labor law. They declared that pasteboard and wooden stock boxes were good enough seats for saleswomen; that they should not expect to sit down in business hours anyhow. They defended, on what they called economic grounds, their long hours and uncompensated overtime. They defended their systems of f

ssion, and in spite of the merchants' protests the

erks are girls under twenty-one. The bill also provided seats for saleswomen, and specified the number of seats,-one to every three clerks. It forbade the employment o

stores was given over to the local boards of health, supposedly experts in matters of health and sanitation, but, as it proved, ignorant of industrial

epartment. A little more than a year ago they succeeded. After the bill placing all retail stores under factory inspection was passed, a committee from the Merchants' Asso

than nine hundred and twenty-three under-age children were taken out of their places as cash girls, stock girls, and wrappers, and were sent

flesh and blood. The department-store owners who so bitterly fought the Mercantile Law, and for years afterwards fought its enforcement, were not monst

women have succeeded, in a measure, in controlling the b

condition of the standard except this one. The League stands firm on the point, and up to the present so do the stores. Only the long, slow process of public education wi

ng three to five months of every winter. The customer, by declining to purchase after a certain hour, is able to release the weary

still done by cheap hand labor, is a statement which strains credulity. Merely from

s, in most other stores, the accounting force is made up of girls not long out of grammar school, ignorant and incapable-but cheap. They work slowly, and as each day's sales are

public opinion, can be expected to overcome this blight, and the C

ter city, State after State, formed Consumers' Leagues, until, in 1899, a National League, with branches in twenty-two States, was organiz

ue and all of the others have been collecting reasons ever since. To-day they have a comprehensive and systematized collection of reasons why women should not work long hours; why they should not work at night; why manufacturi

ts concerning the human side of industry. It is ammunition which tells. One single blast of it, fired in the direction of a laundry in Portland, Or

stantly violated, especially in the steam laundries of Portland. One night a factory inspector walked into the laundry of one Curt Muller,

nstitution guarantees to every adult member of the community the right freely to contract. A man or a woman may contract with an employer to work as many hours a day, or a night, for whatever wages, in whatever dangerous or unhealthful or menacing conditions, unless

ared unconstitutional because nobody's health or safety was endangered; and on the s

uld attack the Oregon law. The case was appealed, and appealed again, by the laundrymen, and

rk headquarters. This brief is probably one of the most remarkable legal documents in existence. It consists of one hundred and twelve printed pages, of which a few paragraphs were written by

Hours of Labor for Women is Based." It is simply a mass of testimony taken from hearings before the English Parliament, before state legislatures, state labor boards; from the

PROTECTING W

shing clothes, from a simple home or backyard occupation, has been transformed into a highly-organized factory trade full of complicated and often extremely dangerous machinery; that the atmosphere of a steam laundry is more conducive to tuberculosis and the

nding; the heightened susceptibility of women to industrial poisons-lead, naphtha, and the like. A long chapter of testimony o

America, revealed the bad effect of long hours on women's safety, both physical and moral. It reveal

in an eight-hour day as in a twelve-hour day has actually been demonstrated. The b

g the hours from ten to nine. The work was done on piece wages, and the girls at first protested against the nine-hour day, fearing that their pay envelopes would suffer. To their astonishment they earned as much in nine hours as they had in ten. In time the employer cut the working day down to eight hours and a half, and in addition gave the gir

sumers' League convinced the Supreme Court of the Un

e protection of women workers. If the Oregon law had been declared unconstitutional, laws in twenty States, or practically all the States where women work

trary 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 cou

oped to secure further legislation for women workers. As it is, women in many States are preparing to

y abandonment, on the part of women, of class prejudice and class distinctions. Where formerly the interest of the leisured

, 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

h 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 t

S STUDYING L

acturers' Association. In his inaugural address Mr. Kirby warned his colleagues that women's clubs were not the ladylike, innocuous institutions that too-confiding man supposed them to be. In those clubs, he declared, their own wives and daughters were listening to addresses by the

s clubs. The women built a magnificent clubhouse on Madison Avenue, furnished it with every luxury, including a wonderful roof-garden. For a time the Colony Club appeared to be nothing more than a beautiful toy which

address them. They asked John Mitchell and many lesser lights of the labor world. They wanted to learn, at first hand, the facts concerning conditio

ould enjoy wealth and luxury at the cost of illness, suf

f wage earners in industries and in governmental institutions. A few conscientious employers have spent a part of their profits to make their employees comfortable. The

qually, no one should regard them as a solution of the industri

it has been instituted, not to benefit the workers, but to advertise the business. Too often its re

ork and clean the rooms. Since they work on a piece-work scale, the "perfect sanitary conditions" exist at their expense. In a department store I know, employees are require

rest, vacations with pay, and the like are no more than the wage earner's due. They are a part of the laborer's hire, and should be

izations has proved beyond doubt that good working conditions, reasonable hours of work, and living

large part of the Long Island traffic. This traffic is very heavy in summer on account of the number of summer resorts along the coast. In the fall and winter the traffic is very light. Six months in the year the operators at th

into bankruptcy if he allowed his women clerks human working conditions. Then came the Consumers' League and mercantile laws, and a new pressure of pu

lf to be such good business policy that in future all intelligent employers

eir employees vacations with pay. A clerk coming home after a vacation can sell goods, even in dull times. More and more employers are coming to appreciate the money value of the Saturd

M OF DEVELOPING

ow the employees to fix the terms of their own employment. This is the Filene store in Boston, which has developed within the past ten years

dividual clerk. The best possible material is sought. No girl under sixteen is employed, and no girl of any age who has

of payment, but according to earning capacity. Taken throughout the store, wages, plus commissions, which are

y and initiative in their employees the Filenes have put them on a self-governing basis. The workers do not literally make their own rules, but the vote of the majority can change any rule made by the firm

dues are exacted, as is the custom in the usual employees' association. The executive body, called the Store Council, and all other officers are elected by the members. All matte

s. A meeting of the association is called, and a vote taken as to whether the majority want the extra holiday or not; whether the majority are willing to lose the commissions on a

disagreements as to wages, position, promotion, all questions of personal issue between saleswomen and aislemen, or others in authority, are referred to the Board of Arbitration, and the board'

tently ruled that the Constitution forbade the State to make laws protecting women workers. It has seemed to most of our courts and most of our judges that the State fulfilled its whole duty to its women citizens when it guaranteed them the right freely to contract-even though they co