Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-03-03
WOMEN AND THE TEN-HoUR LAW

WOMEN AND THE TEN-HoUR LAW
1t is a somewhat remarkable circum-
stance that the supreme court should
have been able to arrive at the very
lust and humane decision upholding Ore
CONS law limiting hours of female Ia
Dor in factories only by making a le-
gal distinction between the sexes, anu
ruling that woman may be deprived
of freedom of contract, for her person
al advantage and for the benefit of So
ciety. whereas superior man cannot be
deprived of his liberty for like reasons.
The tendency of modern legislation and
court decisions has been to break down
the legal differences between the sexes,
and TO establish their equality before
the law. What will the suffragettes
think of judicial opinion that the
physical and mental ineapacity of WON
en- is such as to justify limitations upon
her contractual powers which, in the
case of mere man, would be considered
an arbitrary interference with liberty
of contract
There are doubtless a good many peo-
pie VINO will think Justice Brewer s
op:nion does more credit to his human
itarian impulses than to his legal acu-
men, for there is really no difference
in principle between the New York
Bakers case, where the supreme court
inyalidated ten-hour law, and the Ore
gon case, just decided, save the ten
hour law applied in the one to men and
in the other to women. And, curious
ly enough, following the decision in the
former case, the highest court of New
York declared unconstitutional stat
ute prohibiting women from working in
factories more than ten hours a day, on
the ground that it deprived women of
their liberty of contract, the opinion
holding that men and women are on
an equality in respect TO the enjoyment
of this liberty. The New York court
saw no difference between ten-hour
law applying to women and similar
law applying to masculine bakers. 1t
has now high authority for reversing a
INDICTMENT founded on that high author
ity's own opinion.
The truth is that freedom of contract,
so far as the conditions of labor are
concerned, means, in most instances,
that the conditions imposed by one par
ty to the contract must be accepted,
no matter what they are. The liberty
actually exercised is that of acceptance,
not of modification or rejection. The
right at stake is one of those equivocal
rights, as somebody has called them,
that must often seem a mockery to the
laborer cit is hypocritical baseness,
said President Roosevelt in his recent
message, "to speak of a girl who works
in a factory where the dangerous ma
chinery is unprotected as having the
right freely to contract to expose her
self TO dangers to life and limb. She
has no alternative but to suffer want or
else to expose herself to such dangers. -
But the man and the woman are al
most equally helpless to take advantage
of their right of contract under mod
ern industrial conditions, and there is
no sound reason for making a distinc-
ton between the sexes in this regard.
The right so carefully preserved to the
male laborer, but of which the female
may be deprived because of her sex, is
of no practical value to either. 1t is
becoming more and more difficult to con-
vince the American people that free
dom to toll long hours under unwhole-
some conditions is the sort of liberty
guaranteed by the Constitution and JUS
tice Brewers opinion recognizes at
least the humanity of this sentiment