The wageworker., 1909-10-02

IIdSI WSSh Juus5e uthAil VI tiiC I'll
cult court of Cook county, ILL.,, granted
an injunction restraining the state fac
tory inspector, Edgar T. Davis, from
enforcing the recently enacted law
prohibiting the employment of women
more than ten hours in any one day.
The last legislature of the state
passed an act limiting the hours of
employment for women in factories
and other industries to ten day. and
prescribed severe penalties for viola
tions of the law. The employers soon
afterward began to busy themselves
with plans to overthrow the law. w.
c. Ritchie & Co., box manufacturing
concern, prayed the circuit court for
an injunction against the enforcement
of the statute, uniting in the petition
as complaining parties two women
long time, one of them thirty-two
years and the other sixteen. These
women swore that they could not
make living at the work they were
doing unless they were allowed to
continue it longer than ten hours
day
Judge Tuthill promptly acquiesced
in the contentious of the petitioners
on the ground that it interfered with
the right of women to make indiyid-
ual contracts and work as many hours
as they please. In rendering his deci-
sion he said: ITO deny this injunc-
ton would put woman back one hun
dred years. The law as it now stands
virtually relegates woman back to de-
pendence. 1t deprives her of the
power to exercise the right of con-
tract, which is IN her by the con-
stitution.'
The utter sophistry of the plea of
the employees, and the utter disregard
of common, sense. if not of judicial
procedure on the part of Judge Tuthill,
is so much better explained by Louis
F. Post in the Chicago Public than
The Wageworker could hope to do 1t,
that Mr.. Posts words are here quoted
in their entirety:
Upon urgent petitions from working
women, the legislature of Illinois last
winter enacted law limiting the en-
ployment of women in factories to ten
hours a day. AS the law met opposi-
ton from the Illinois Manufacturers
Association, it was with great diff
Guilty that it's enactment was secured I;
and in order to secure it the working
women were obliged to modify the
limitations they desired, from eight
hours to ten. The Illinois Manuufac
tuurers' Association is now checking
the operation of this law as unconsti
tuutional 1t has applied for an in
jnction to restrain the criminal courts
from enforcing the penal provisions OF
the law against the employers. This
would have been to laugh few years
ago--the bringing of suit in chanc
cry to restrain public prosecutors anc
grand juries and criminal courts from
enforcing criminal statute! But since
the judicial innovation known as gov
ernment by Injunction such proceed
ing is no great novelty, and one of the
judges has granted the injunction. His
expressed reasons are that the law
prevents a woman from exercising hel
right of free contract.
"A stupid reason that, for any really
intelligent Judge to give. The law IL
question is essentially in the inter
est of free contract; its notification
is in the interest of economic coercion
Mrs. Raymond Robins, president o
the Women's Trade Union League
drives this point home when sh'
says: Everybody who knows what Il
going on in the world Except judge
and lawyers) knows that freedom o
contract can exist only between par
ties on an economic equality 1t il
manifestly true, as Mrs. Robins in
plies, that working women and thei
employers do not contract as economl
equals The employers can wait; tn
workers wait at peril of starvation
The employers command working OF
portunities; the workers are cut ol
by privilege-fostering laws. And IL
asmuch as this economic inequality |
intensified by long hours and modifie
by short hours. laws limiting hour
are in the direction of freedom OF ls
Dor contracts, while injunctions agains
the enforcement of such laws ar
away from freedom of labor contract.
Under existing economic condition
the theory of free contract as apple
in this ten-hour case, brings mer
nhrase of industrial freedom to tn