e Goldmark, one of the
most effective workers in the League's New York headquarters. This brief
is probably one of the most remarkable legal documents in existence. It
consists of one hundred and twelve printed pages, of which a few
paragraphs were written by the attorney for the State. All the rest was
contributed, under Miss Goldmark's direction, from the Consumers'
League's wonderful collection of reasons why women workers should be
protected.

The League's reply to the Oregon laundrymen who asked leave to work
their women employees far into the night was, "The World's Experience
upon Which the Legislation Limiting the Hours of Labor for Women is
Based." It is simply a mass of testimony taken from hearings before the
English Parliament, before state legislatures, state labor boards; from
the reports of factory inspectors in many countries; from reports of
industrial commissions in the United States and elsewhere; from medical
books; from reports of boards of health.

REASONS FOR PROTECTING WOMEN WORKERS The brief included a short and
interesting chapter, containing a number of things the League had
collected on the subject of laundries. Supreme Court judges cannot be
expected to know that laundry work is classed by experts among the
dangerous trades. That washing clothes, from a simple home or backyard
occupation, has been transformed into a highly-organized factory trade
full of complicated and often extremely dangerous machinery; that the
atmosphere of a steam laundry is more conducive to tuberculosis and the
other occupational diseases than cotton mills; that the work in
laundries, being irregular, is conducive to a general low state of
morals; that, on the whole, women should not be required to spend more
time than necessary in laundries; all this was set forth.

Medical testimony showed the physical differences between men and
women; the lesser power of women to endure long hours of standing; the
heightened susceptibility of women to industrial poisons--lead, naphtha,
and the like. A long chapter of testimony on the effect of child-bearing
in communities where the women had toiled long hours before marriage, or
afterwards, was included.

The testimony of factory inspectors, of industrial experts, of employers
in England, Germany, France, America, revealed the bad effect of long
hours on women's safety, both physical and moral. It revealed the good
effect, on the individual health, home life, and general welf