Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/510

 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The laundries, too, now come under the law for the first time. In their case, however, only the initial step has been taken ; for the inspectors are still powerless to order the machines guarded or the premises ventilated. While children under six- teen years of age can no longer be legally employed at danger- ous ironing machines, there remains the danger of prostration by the heat, and the inspectors cannot order cold rooms heated, nor hot rooms cooled, nor wet rooms dried. The long, slow hazard of consumption, the enervation of protracted over-exer- tion, cannot yet be dealt with by the inspection department. We are still at the stage in which there must be conspicuous, sensational damage, visible to the naked eye, before further measures can be enacted or existing measures sustained by the courts.

The restriction, under the new law, of the hours of work of children under sixteen years of age is the first step towards retrieving the damage inflicted upon the workers when the eight- hours' law was pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Illinois, in Ritchie vs. the People, March 15, 1895. Although this new provision sets no limit to the night work of the children, it does provide that their hours of labor shall not exceed ten in any one day, nor sixty in any one week. Even this is a gain in a city where little girls of twelve have been required, at the Christmas season, to work in stores from 7 : 30 in the morning to midnight, and where the candy factories have usually worked until nine, in preparation for the same festival season. The enforcement of the ten-hours' day will, of Course, involve difficulties in the sweatshops and in the department stores, where children may still be kept late at night by working a second shift in the afternoon and evening. Yet this provision is a step in the right direction. It affects probably about ten thousand children.

Previous to the enactment of the factory law of 1893, there had been two attempts at legislative regulation of the employ- ment of children in Illinois : the compulsory-education law of 1891, repealed in 1893, and in part reenacted in 1897; anc * a