envelope grew slight.

This woman was not discussing the value of shorter working hours, she
was pointing out that "equal pay" cannot rule for an entire group of
workers when restrictions apply to part of the group and not to the
whole body. We meet here, not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact.
Pay is not equal, and cannot be, where conditions are wholly unequal.
Protection for the woman worker means exactly what it would mean for the
alien man if by law he were forbidden to work Saturday afternoon,
overtime or at night, while the citizen worker was without restriction.
The alien would be cut off from advancement in every trade in which he
did not by overwhelming numbers dominate the situation, he would be kept
to lower grade processes, he would receive much lower pay than the
unprotected worker.

What common sense would lead us to expect in the hypothetical case of an
alien man, has happened for the woman worker. Oddly enough she has not
herself asked for this protection, but it has been urged very largely by
women not of the industrial class. Women teachers, doctors, lawyers,
women of leisure are the advocates of special legislation for industrial
women. And yet in their own case they are entirely reasonable, and ask
no favors. The woman teacher, and quite truly, insists that she works as
hard and as long hours as the man in her grade of service, and on that
sound foundation she builds her just demand for equal pay. Women doctors
and lawyers have never asked for other than a square deal in their
professions.

It would be well, perhaps, if industrial women were permitted to guide
their own ship. They have knowledge enough to reach a safe harbor. There
was a hint that they were about to assume the helm when the rank and
file of union workers voted down at the conference of the Women's Trade
Union League the resolution proposing a law to forbid women acting as
conductors. It was also suggestive when a woman rose and asked of the
speaker on dangerous trades, whether "men did not suffer from exposure
to fumes, acids and dust."

Women have so long been urging that they are people, that they have
forgotten, perchance, that men are people also. Men respond to rest and
recreation as do human beings of the opposite sex. All workers need, and
both sexes should have, protection. But if only one sex in industrial
life can have bulwarks thrown up about it, men should be the favored
ones just now. They are few, they are pre