Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/219

 FA CTORY LEGISLA TION FOR WOMEN 20 5

making suggestions for improvement. The cry to "legislate," " legislate," is useless unless the public mind be saturated with the necessity of remedial action.

Reform of some kind is certainly feasible, though not through such schemes as impossible as irrational as are sug- gested by various sentimental philanthropists.

When one reads of factories like that in Ohio which paid women thirty-six cents per dozen shirts, and opened and closed the day with thanksgiving and prayer, one is tempted to give up striving and patiently await the millennium. We need a moral regenera- tion, not only of the employers, but of the employes as well. Justice should be the watchword of all. But good legislation, backed by intelligent administration, is the power we must look to to change the mere machine life of the average factory woman to that of an intelligent worker ; and faith in the United States and her institutions leads us to believe that an era of good is at hand when

" All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist, Not its semblance but itself."

REFERENCES.

1 . Factory Reports of the various states.

2. Census Reports, 1850-1890.

3. Wright, Industrial Evolution in United States.

4. Mrs. Helen Campbell, Women Wage Earners.

5. Taylor, Modern Factory System.

6. Stimson, Labor in its Relation to Law.

7. Stimson, Handbook of Laws of United States.

8. Labor Laws of Massachusetts, 1888.

9. Tenth Special Report of Labor Commission. Labor Laws, 1896.

10. Ely, Labor Movement in America.

1 1. Reports of Conventions of Factory Inspectors.

1 2. Wright, Factory System in Tenth Census.

13. Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Massa- chusetts, 1873.

14. Newton, Social Studies, chap. iv.

15. Jevons, The State in Relation to Labor (1887).

ANNIE MARION MACLEAN. rn UNIVERSITY or CHICAGO.