ed
of machines should be regulated by law; why pure-food laws should be
extended; why minimum wage rates should be established.

In the headquarters of the National League in New York City a group of
trained experts work constantly, collecting and recording a vast body of
facts concerning the human side of industry. It is ammunition which
tells. One single blast of it, fired in the direction of a laundry in
Portland, Oregon, two years ago, performed the wonderful feat of blowing
a large hole through the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.

There was a law in Oregon which decreed that the working day of women in
factories and laundries should be ten hours long. The law was constantly
violated, especially in the steam laundries of Portland. One night a
factory inspector walked into the laundry of one Curt Muller, and found
working there, long after closing time, one Mrs. Gotcher. The inspector
promptly sent Mrs. Gotcher home and arrested Mr. Muller.

The next day in court Mr. Muller was fined ten dollars. Instead of
paying the fine he appealed, backed up in his action by the other
laundrymen of Portland, on the ground that the ten-hour law for women
workers was unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution guarantees to every adult member of the community the right
freely to contract. A man or a woman may contract with an employer to
work as many hours a day, or a night, for whatever wages, in whatever
dangerous or unhealthful or menacing conditions, _unless_ "there is fair
ground to say that there is material danger to the public health or
safety, or to the health and safety of the employee, or to the general
welfare...." This is the legal decision on which most protective
legislation in the United States has been based.

Several years ago, in Illinois, a law providing an eight-hour day for
women was declared unconstitutional because nobody's health or safety
was endangered; and on the same grounds the same fate met a New York
law forbidding all-night employment of women.

So Mr. Curt Muller and the laundrymen of Portland, Oregon, had reason to
believe that they could attack the Oregon law. The case was appealed,
and appealed again, by the laundrymen, and finally reached the Supreme
Court of the United States. Then the Consumers' League took a hand.

The brief for the State of Oregon, "defendant in error," was prepared by
Louis D. Brandeis, of Boston, assisted by Josephin