The labor argus. [volume] (Charleston, W. Va.) 1906-1915, 1909-12-23
Confession Made by the
Illinois Manufacturers
Association on Ten
Hour Question.
Sordid Greed for Money
Causes Them to Sacri-
flee Women Wage
Earners-R esort to
Government by In
junction Process.

Upon urgent petition from working
women the legislature of Illinois last win
ter enacted law limiting the employ
ment of women in factories to ten hours
u day. AS the law met opposition from
the Illinois Manufacturers Association
1T was with great difficulty that it's enact
ment was secured; and in order to secure
it the working women we're oblig to
modify the limitation they desired from
eight hours. The Illinois manufacturer 3
Association is now checking the operation
OF .uls law as unconstitutional. 1t has ap-
Piled for an injunction to restrain the
criminal courts from enforcing the penal
provisions of the law against employers
This would have been to laugh q few
years ago-the bringing o. a suit in
chancery to restrain public prosecutors
and grand juries and criminal courts
from enforcing u criminal statute! But
since the judicial innovation known as
F." government by injunction,'' such a
proceeding is no great novelty, and one
of the judges has granted an injunction.
Lis expressed reasons are that the law
prevents woman from exercising her
right of free contract.
A stupid reason that, for any really in
telligent judge to give. The law in ques
ton is essential,y in the interest of free
contract; its notification is in the interest
of economic coercion. Mrs Raymond
Robins, president of the Women s Trade
Union League, drives this point home
when she says: Everybody who knows
what is going on in the world (except
judges and lawyers) known that freedom
of contract can exist only between parties
on an economic equality It is manifest
ly true, as Mrs Robins implies, that work
ing women and their employers do not
contract as economic equals. The en-
ployer can wait; the workers wait at peril
of starvation. The employers command
working opportunities; the workers are
cut off by privilege fostering laws. And
inasmuch as this economic inequality is
intensified by long hours and modified by
short hours, laws limiting hours are in the
direction of freedom of labor contracts,
while injunctions against the enforcement
of such laws are away from freedom of
labor contracts. Under existing economic
conditions the theory of free contract as
APPLIED in this ten hour case, bring a mere
phase of industrial freedom to the aid
of actual industrial despotism.
Regardless, however, of that view of the
matter, what is there severe enough to say
of the hideous confession of the Illinois
Manufacturers Association in this case
Neither the Association or its members
could get into court technically without
trn rI ba Of
make the court believe that it's lawsuit is
in behalf of working women. What it
wants is an injunction that will give it's
members the power to exact long hours of
their workers. But what it had to show
technically, was that the right of work
ers to work long hours was ut stake. So
couple of working women are induced
to lend their names to the suit. And
now, thoughtful folks, think of the fact
which this employers association itself
discloses through the affadavits of those
unfortunate working women. Think of
this hideous confession which it makes! !!
1t proves by them that neither one of the
two-faith, nj working women, mind you
that neither of them, although one has
worked faithfully at her trade for sixteen
s.
and given satisfaction--yet that neither
OF them gets for ten hours a day of faith
full and competent work enough wages to
live upon. Ism t this confession of the
Illinois Manufacturers Association hid
eous enough to make baby farming and
the ''white slave traffic seem tolerable
by comparisont
When women of long experience and ex-
pert and faithful at their work, are not
paid enough wages to live upon for ten
hours work day, there is something rot
ten IN the industrial Denmark. When
-4ese conditions exist, workers must be
at an economic disadvantage in selling
their work; for no one would voluntarily
contract to work ten hours day for less
than bare living. When this is so, there
is higher duty for judges-if they wish
to be regarded as intelligent, or humane,