Veritas Harvard University Library
Page Delivery Service
Kelley, Florence. Women in trade unions. [New York?: s.n., 1906?].
Sequence 1 of 8 (No Page Number)
View framed version of this document
Radcliffe CoUe~e Library

Woman's Archives

Women in Trade Unions
(Reproduced from The Outlook by permission) ~


BY FLORENCE KELLEY
Secretary of the National Consumers' League

The need of trade unions for day and to forty-eight in one week.
women is more poignant today in If the Constitution of Illinois alone
the United States than in any other had been invoked, an amendment
I country. For ours is the only na- might have been passed without
tion in which any court has held that much loss of time, conferring upon
the hours of work of women can- the Legislature the powers which
~not be limited by statute. it lacked. The Court, however,
in Such a judicial decision places up- yoked the Fourteenth Amendment
on the trade unions and other vol- to the Constitution of the United
untary associations (such as the States, holding that women are
citi Consumers' League) the impossible zeus in the sense that their freedom
task of protecting women employed of contract cannot be interfered
in manufacture an rommerce from with, although in Illinois their
p0night-work and overwork unaided ditical rights as citizens go no
furby Nation or State. In enlightened ther than the power to vote, once in
industrial States protection is af- four years, for trustees of the State
forded by a national law in the in- University of Illinois.
terest of public health, efficiency, The results of this judicial
decisand morals. ion have been far-reaching and
sin Portugal and several countries of ister, and the end is not yet. Tn
eastern Europe have deferred leg- Illinois the immediate effect "was
islation upon the hours of work of that women were required to work
women. But in none hats a court all night in a wide variety of
occuheld it contrary to the constitution pations. In others they were
reso to legislate. England, France, quired to work far into the night.
Germany, Holland and Switzerland, And this was and is perfectly legal.
from intrusting this important And this is the strongest possible
far stimulus to the formation of unions
task of protecting the public health
to the precarious success of labor among women.
unions, prohibit outright night- In Chicago the laundries
main tain hours which are regularly
irwork for women. Eeginning "~ regular. Monday being a short day
1907, this will be true of Italy also. and Friday and Saturday
havinoMoreover, international agreements
are now in process of negotiation neither beginning nor ending except
among fourteen European States for as work is completed. It is no rare
the purpose of abolishing night- thing for girls to faint at their work.
Girls have been removed from the
work for women in manufacture. laundry to the hospital suffering
ex Our peculiarly urgent need for haustion after working sixteen,
trade unions of women arises from eighteen~ and even twenty-four
the adverse decision of the Supreme hours in heat and dampness in
illCourt of Illinois (Ritchie vs. the ventilated laundries. At "rush"
People, March 15, 1895) wherein seasons, despite the efforts of the
the Court held unconstitutional that unions, there is no limit to the hours
statute which restricted the hours of work in the garment trades, in
of work of women to eight in one candy and paper-box factories, and