Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1912-02-06
lO-HOUR DAY FOR WOMEN
Reasons for Legislative Action
IDLENESS OFTEN AFTER RUSH.
Holds Competition and Customers Re-
sponsible in Large Part For Over
worked EMPLOYEES.

At the present session of the Gen
eral Assembly of Maryland the Con-
sumers' League of this State have
introduced a bill to limit to ten hours
a day or 60 hours a week the work
ing hours of women employed in
manufacturing, mechanical, mercan-
tile and printing establishment shaker
les an laundries.
Although the majority of right
minded persons unhesitatingly pro-
claim their appreciation of this bill
there is a certain hazi1ess in the
minds of many of them as to the exist
ing local conditions that will be al
tered by such a measure, and the
causes of such conditions; the precise
reasons why, from the point of view of
the State, such legislation is absolute
ly necessary; the effect it will have
on wages and the cost of production
and the precedent for such action on
the part of the State. 1t is the pur-
pose of this article to deal as clearly
and briefly as possible with these
questions
Existing local conditions, so far as
legislation is concerned, are moth
ing to be inordinately proud of.
Aside from the law limiting the
working hours of children under six
teen years of age to ten hours a day
and the law forbidding the employ
ment of men or women in the cot
ton and wooden industries more
than the same number of hours,
the State of Maryland provides abso-
lutely no legal protection from over
work to the mothers of the genera
tion to come. 1t leaves the employer
free to compel or permit them to
work twenty-four hours out of TWEEN
ty-four, if he happens to want to do so.
Excessive hours throughout the
year are to be found in many establish
ments, and the situation is compli-
Gated and made particularly difficult to
deal with by the system of overtime,
or time in addition to the normal
working day. The normal working
day in mercantile establishments does
not exceed ten hours-in fact, in most
stores falls below it. With few ex-
ceptions, however, the department
stores and a great many of the small
CT SiopS stay Opcu OdbuIuay nights
and, for a varying period of time
before Christmas, a fourteen-hour
day is customary.
The normal day in most factories is
not more than ten hours. Most of
the industries, however, in which
women are employed in large numbers
the canning, candy, cotton and to-
bacco industries, the straw hat, needle
and paper-box trades-have rush sea-
sons, during which the hours of
labor are extended to any point
that happens to be convenient tc the
employer. The consequence is that
one of the fruits of the rush sea-
son is the impaired or ruined health
of countless numbers of women.
The length of the season varies
in different industries, and, gener-
ally speaking, the better organized
the industry, the shorter the rush
season. The result, of course, of
crowding the bulk of the work of
an industry into a period of a few
months is to leave a large force of
workers unemployed or partially en-
ployed during the remaining months
of the year. In the normal industry
the rush season usually is balanced by
slack period. which is, in some cases,
equally Objectionable.