igest of the evidence of governmental commissions, laboratories, and
bodies of scientific research, on the effects of overwork, and
especially of overtime work, on girls and women, and through them on
the succeeding generation. Incidentally the brief contained three
pages of law.

The most striking part of the argument contained in the brief was the
testimony of physicians on the toxin of fatigue.

"Medical Science has demonstrated," says this most important paragraph,
"that while fatigue is a normal phenomenon ... excessive fatigue or
exhaustion is abnormal.... It has discovered that fatigue is due not
only to actual poisoning, but to a specific poison or toxin of fatigue,
entirely analogous in chemical and physical nature to other bacterial
toxins, such as the diphtheria toxin. It has been shown that when
artificially injected into animals in large amounts the fatigue toxin
causes death. The fatigue toxin in normal quantities is said to be
counteracted by an antidote or antitoxin, also generated in the body.
But as soon as fatigue becomes abnormal the antitoxin is not produced
fast enough to counteract the poison of the toxin."

The Supreme Court of the State of Illinois decided that the American
Constitution was never intended to shield manufacturers in their
willingness to poison women under pretense of giving them work. The
ten-hour law was sustained.

That the "Girls' Bill" passed, or that it was even introduced, was due
in large measure to an organization of women, more militant and more
democratic than any other in the United States. This is the Women's
Trade Union League. Formed in New York about seven years ago, the
League consists of women members of labor unions, a few men in organized
trades, and many women outside the ranks of wage earners. Some of these
latter are women of wealth, who are believers in the trade-union
principle, but more are women who work in the professional
ranks,--teachers, lawyers, physicians, writers, artists, settlement
workers. These are the first professional workers, men or women, who
ever asked for and were given affiliation with the American Federation
of Labor. They are the first people, outside the ranks of wage earners,
to appear in Labor Day parades.

The object of the League, which now has branches in five cities,--New
York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cleveland,--is to educate women
wage earners in the doctrine of trade unionism. The League trains and
supports or