Part 17 (1/2)
Mr. Curt Muller of Oregon employed a working woman in his laundry for more than ten hours. Information was filed against him by an inspector.
Mr. Muller's trial resulted in a verdict against him, and a sentence of a ten-dollar fine. He appealed the case to the State Supreme Court of Oregon, which affirmed his conviction. Mr. Muller then appealed the case to the Federal Supreme Court.
In the defence of the law before the Federal Supreme Court, the National Consumers' League had the good fortune to obtain, in cooperation with the State of Oregon, the services of Louis D. Brandeis, the most distinguished services that could have been received, generously rendered as a gift. This fact alone may serve to indicate the vital character of the case, and the importance, for industrial justice in the future, of securing a favorable verdict for the laundry workers.
The argument of Mr. Muller was that the Oregon Ten-Hour Law was unconst.i.tutional: First, because the statute attempted to prevent persons from making their own contracts, and thus violated the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.[41] Next, because the statute did not apply equally to all persons similarly situated and was cla.s.s legislation. And, finally, because the statute was not a valid exercise of the police power; that is to say, there was no necessary or reasonable connection between the limitations described by the act and the public health and welfare.
Mr. Brandeis' brief replied that, first, the guaranty of freedom of contract was legally subject to such reasonable restraint of action as the State may impose in the exercise of the police power for the protection of the general health and welfare. It submitted that certain facts of common knowledge established conclusively that there was reasonable ground for holding that to permit women in Oregon to work in a mechanical establishment or factory or laundry more than ten hours in one day was dangerous to public welfare.
These facts of common knowledge, collected by Miss Josephine Goldmark, the Publication Secretary of the National Consumers' League, were considered under two heads: first, that of American and foreign legislation restricting the hours of labor for women; and, second, the world's experience, upon which the legislation limiting the hours of labor for women is based.
These facts comprised the governmental restrictions of the number of hours employers may require women to labor, from twenty States of the United States, and from Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Holland, Italy, and Germany. The laws were followed by authoritative statements from over ninety reports of committees, bureaus of statistics, commissioners of hygiene, and government inspectors, both in this country and in all the civilized countries of Europe, a.s.severating that long hours of labor are dangerous for women, primarily because of their special physical organization.
In reply to the second allegation,--that the act in question was cla.s.s legislation, as it did not apply equally to all persons similarly situated,--the plaintiff answered that the specific prohibition of more than ten hours' work in a laundry was not an arbitrary discrimination against that trade; because the present character of the business and its special dangers of long hours afford strong reasons for providing a legal limitation of the hours of work in that industry as well as in manufacturing and mechanical establishments. Statements from industrial and medical authorities described conclusively the present character of the laundry business.
Mr. Brandeis finally submitted that, in view of all these facts, the present Oregon statute was within Oregon's police power, as its public health and welfare did require a legal limitation of the hours of women's work in manufacturing and mechanical establishments and in laundries.
Justice Brewer delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States. The case was won. Here are, in part, the words of the decision:--
It may not be amiss in the present case, before examining the const.i.tutional question, to notice the course of legislation as well as expressions of opinion from other judicial sources. In the brief filed by Mr. Brandeis ... is a copious collection of all these matters. The ... legislation and opinions referred to ... are significant of a widespread belief that woman's physical structure and the special functions she performs in consequence thereof, justify special legislation restricting or qualifying the conditions under which she should be permitted to toil.
Const.i.tutional questions, it is true, are not settled by even a consensus of present public opinion.... At the same time, when a question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent to which a special const.i.tutional limitation goes is affected by the truth in respect to the fact, a widespread and long-continued belief concerning it is worthy of consideration.
We take judicial cognizance of all matters of general knowledge....
That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity, continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon her body, and as healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race.
n.o.body knowing the actual strain upon women laundry workers, no one who had seen them lying motionless and numb with fatigue at the end of a long day, or foregoing food itself for the sake of rest, could listen unmoved to these thrilling words of the greatest court of our country.
The most eloquent characteristic of the Supreme Court's affirmation was the fact that it was essentially founded simply upon clear, human truth, firmly and widely ascertained, founded on a respect, not only for the past, but for the future of the whole nation.
Too often does one hear that ”law has nothing to do with equity,” till one might believe that law was made for law's sake, and not as a means of deliverance from injustice. ”The end of litigation is justice. We believe that truth and justice are more sacred than any personal consideration.”
Such was the conception of the office of the law expressed by Justice Brewer twenty years before, on his appointment to the Supreme Bench. It was this conception of law that made the determination of the Oregon case a great decision in our country's history.
From time immemorial, women as well as men have been workers of the world. The vital feature of the statement that six million women are now gainfully employed in this country is not the ”entrance” of mult.i.tudinous women into industry, but the fact that their industry, being now carried on in public instead of private, has been acknowledged and paid. This acknowledgment has led to the establishment of juster terms for women's labor by the Federal Supreme Court. Such an establishment, as the opinion of the court affirmed, is surely a distinct gain, not only for women, but for children, for men, for the race.
When the preparation of food and clothing, the traditional household labor of women, pa.s.sed in large measure from household fires and spinning-wheels into the canning factories and garment trades with the invention of machinery, women simply continued their traditional labor outside their houses instead of inside them.[42] The accounts of the laundry, the s.h.i.+rt-waist and the cloak making trades in New York seem to show that, where men and women engage in the same field of activity, their work is, by a natural division, not compet.i.tive or antagonistic, but complementary. Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that ever occurred in this country, the s.h.i.+rt-waist makers' strike, was kindled by an offensive injustice to a man.
The chronicles of what self-supporting women have given and received in their work in wage and in vitality, these working girls' budgets obtained by the Consumers' League, will not have told their story truly unless they have evoked with their narrative the presence of that impersonal sense of right instinctive in the factory girls who go year after year to Albany to fight against the long Christmas season hours for the shop-girls, in the cloak makers in their effort to stop sweated home work, in the responsible common-sense of countless working women. So that the fact that six million women are now gainfully employed in this country may finally tend to secure wiser adjustments and fairer returns for the labor, not only of women, but of all the workers of the world.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 33: Its severity may be indicated by an account of the work a machine ironer in Illinois regularly performed before the pa.s.sage of the Illinois Ten-Hour Law, when conditions in that State were as they now are in the hotel and hospital laundries of New York. Miss Radway used to iron five hundred s.h.i.+rt bosoms a day. Holding the loose part of the s.h.i.+rt up above her head to prevent the muslin from being caught in the iron, she pressed the bosom in a machine manipulated by three heavy treads--by bearing all of her weight on her right foot stamping down on a pedal to the right; then by bearing all her weight on her left foot, stamping down a pedal to the left; then by pressing down both pedals with a jump. To iron five hundred s.h.i.+rt bosoms required three thousand treads a day.]
[Footnote 34: State Labor Law, paragraph 81.--Protection of Employees Operating Machinery: ”... If a machine or any part thereof is in a dangerous condition or is not properly guarded, the use thereof may be prohibited by the Commissioner of Labor, and a notice to that effect shall be attached thereto. Such notice shall not be removed until the machine is made safe and the required safeguards are provided, and in the meantime such unsafe or dangerous machinery shall not be used.”]
[Footnote 35: Here is a letter from the Secretary of the Women's Trade-Union League, stating the results of organization in the West in the laundry trade: ”The laundry workers in San Francisco eight years ago were competing with the Chinese laundries. The girls working in the laundries there received about $10 a month, with the privilege of 'living in.' Three days in the week they began work at 6 A.M. and worked until 2 A.M. the next morning. The other three days they worked from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. Since organization, they have established the nine-hour day and the minimum wage of $7. They have extended their organization almost the entire length of the Pacific Coast.”]
[Footnote 36: Perhaps a better survey of the standard of wages for all departments of laundry work in which women are employed can be given by the table below. By the word ”standard” I mean the usual wage of a worker of average skill who has been at work in a laundry for a period of at least one year.
Hand starching (s.h.i.+rts) $12 Hand ironing 10 Hand starching (collars) 9 Hand was.h.i.+ng 8 Machine ironing 7 Feeders 6 Folders 6 Catchers 5 Machine starching (s.h.i.+rts) 5 Collar ironing 5 Machine starching (collars) 4.50 Shakers 4.50]