Evening star., 1911-06-11
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but now can you call her gOOQ lawyers!
he cried. 3She doesn't know any law. And
what she proposes will interfere with busi-
ness"
3Perhaps so," we answered; 3but she
knows what the law ought to be-
That's the whole aim of the woman in
law: to show that @Law Makes Right" is
a fallacy. Take the work Mrs. Florence
Kelley is doing, for instance. She walks
straight up to the Law and says:
"See here! You mean well, suppose;
but you've been dealing with inanimate
things like property and precedents and con-
tracts SO long that you have gradually lost
sight of human nature. Allow me to call
your attention to few little matters that
we women have had occasion to learn inside
our homes, which we think ought to enter
into your deliberations.
remember hearing her speak before the
ers of New York's East Side had risen to
protest against an elevated road being put
on Delancey-st., the one open space where
real sunlight and real air could be had by
the children of the tenements. We surged
down to that hearing full of Indignation, and
some quoted points of law and some plead for
mercy or tried to fatter the stolid board into
bcnevolence; some even represented the
surging masses of the East Side as angrily
plucking up that incipient elevated by the
roots and dropping it into the East River.
| remember watching one short legged buig-
ing member of the board who presented the
texture, contour, and color of a roast goose,
and thinking how that hypothetical East
Side mob would find him lusciously rich and
toothsome.
But we didn't make any impression on the
comDlacent board till Mrs. Kelley began to
speak, She was lawyer; but she didn't
talk technical law-sle talked sense and hui
manity. Not for a moment did she question
the legal power of the board to put elevated
roads wherever they happened to choose,
nor did she entertain any illusions about the
East Side making any protest so coherent
as mob; she simply pointed out that to
have no place to play, and no air and no
sunlight, was bad for children, casually re-
minded the board that these were facts they
knew perfectly well, and that therefore they
couldn't possibly do this thing, because it
wasn't right. Her talk was like a cavalry
charge it even dented in the roast goose
lancey-st. today-and there never will be
/ IKE many of the women who study law,
- Mrs. Kelley went into it not in search
of profession, but to get special human
thing done. She was factory Inspector in
Illinois, and brought to county attorney a
case where little girls were hired to work in
poisonous gliding to the great injury of their
health.
Said the attorney, 4Do you expect me to
prosecute this case?"
@Yes. Here is the evidence"
why, can't do that. l might have to
turn round and prosecute Marshall Field
next day! He employs bunch of girls at
the same thing
aWell, why should you not9" asked Mrs.
Kelley
And the district attorney intimated that
anyone who knew so little of what it meant
to interfere with business had no legal mind
and was out of place consulting him. The
next morning she began to study law for
herself.
1t was largely through Mrs. Kelley's in
fuence that the most perfect example of the
woman S legal point of view was embodied in
legislation. In 1895 the Illinois law to limit
the hours of work for women was declared
unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme
Court on the ground that it interfered with
freedom of contract; that it was woman's
privilege to work as long as she chose.
But said the exasperated Mrs. Kelley,
in effect, cts bad for women to work longer
than eight hours, and unhealthy for their
children-you know that"