greater than among males (154 to 1000 females and 101 to 1000 males), and the average number of days lost per employee was almost correspondingly great-1.6 per female and 0.9 per male.'

Women are thus believed to be physiologically less resistant to the wear and tear of industrial life, a conclusion which is reached by Dr. Alice Hamilton of the Harvard Medical School in her observation of the greater susceptibility of women to trade poisons. Some recent data, paralleled in other countries, which Dr. Hamilton has gathered from American potteries, show that "The average length of exposure to lead of the men who developed lead poisoning was seventeen years, but the average length of exposure for the women was only 9.3 years."

2

Because, then, of their youth, their maternity, and their tendency to more frequent ill-health, with all of the accompanying implications of these factors (including immobility), special laws have been enacted for women for shorter working hours, minimum wages, special working conditions, the prohibition of night work, and, in some occupations, for the entire prohibition of employment.

The condition of affairs as thus stated appears convincing and entirely defensible, and well within the established limits of custom. But the facts of experience and the social trend of recent years press the question as to whether in stating the case thus it has been presented completely, or whether a full stop may have been placed where only a comma should have fallen. For we have seen, as the numbers of employed women increase and spread into wider fields of industry, that we are forced to recognize the arrival of new ele

1 Sickness Among New York State Factory Workers in 1919, Bulletin no. 108, State Department of Labor, August, 1921.

2 The Woman Citizen, "Protection for Working Women," March 8, 1924, p. 16.

ments of difficulty regarding the desirability of their protection when men are not protected likewise. The principle of special protection is being challenged as untenable and irrational-as prejudicial to women rather than advantageous. What, then, is the cause of this protest?

We have seen that certain minorities of women such as those in newspaper offices, in foundries, and some of those in the transportation service, have found themselves out of employment because of legislation which restricted them while their men associates and competitors remained legally free to work. We have seen that these women, who are neither very young nor apparently greatly encumbered by home ties, instead of asking for protection privileges, are asking their legislators to "give a woman a man's chanceindustrially." They join with the National Woman's Party in the demand "that women shall no longer be barred from any occupation, but every occupation open to men shall be open to women, and restrictions upon the hours, conditions, and remuneration of labor shall apply alike to both sexes."

And now, while these demands may appear at first thought to be directly opposed to the best interests of women and society, these women insist that upon second thought the case is quite the reverse. They maintain that too much stress is laid upon the differences between men and women whence springs the case for legislating for women only, and not enough attention is given to the similarities in men and women whence springs the need, perhaps, for legislating for both. Instead of mitigating the whole human burden of industrial hardship, and so improving the family and social condition of workers, this discrimination against woman creates restrictions that make new obstacles for her in finding employment, or in keeping it on terms of equality of pay.

It should be said at the outset that these groups of women

protestants would include adults only in this freedom from special protection. Their belief is as firm that minors, both male and female, should be specially protected against the raids of industry upon their minds and bodies, as that adult women should not have such special protection.

For adult women the grievance is that barring them from entering certain occupations or prohibiting them from continuing in skilled occupations for which they are trained, such as polishing and grinding and core making, the effect is not only injurious to themselves but the repercussions of the injury are felt by all other women in industry. For the result automatically throws them back into occupations most of which are already overcrowded by women and in which women, chiefly because of their numbers, are underpaid. The economically necessary result of this increased pressure for employment is depression of the bargaining power which is already weak, rendering women less able to help themselves in the struggle for decent working conditions and a living wage. In turn, it is this very lack of power among working women that forms one of the principal bases of special laws for their protection. Thus, there is formed a vicious circle from which women are not permitted to escape.

That this series of discriminations to which women are found time after time to be victims is a serious matter in their economic life, few who are acquainted with economic facts will deny. The fact that women are commonly considered primarily as mothers of the race has been an unchallenged reason for disregarding the obstacles in the way of their economic progress. It is impossible to say how much of woman's backwardness in industry is owing to the disregard of ways to help her forward-ways which are devised for men, as for example for the sons of bricklayers and bakers in New York who, it will be remembered, were

released from the night work prohibition so that they might learn their fathers' trades in the cool of the summer mornings.

But here it is rightly asked, can the health of women be maintained without special protection? We have seen records showing that their morbidity is greater than that of men. Can this fact be denied any more than we can deny that women are by these laws economically handicapped as compared with men? Unfortunately, there is no single answer to this important question and so we must continue the analysis. Sometimes, of course, women's ill-health is that of pregnancy or of permanent injuries from having borne children. Sometimes it is the result of the double strain of housework and a paid job; and sometimes it is the absence of proper maintenance caused either by the lack of regular work which brings regular pay, or, having regular employment, the lack of sufficient pay.

When ill-health is an outgrowth of child bearing, obviously it is peculiar to women, and probably all of those whose views we are discussing, whether or not they believe generally in special protection of women, are agreed that proper provisions should be made for women who are engaged in that hazardous occupation. This is a subject for a separate analysis.

When the ill-health of women is a result of overwork from combining household duties with industrial employment, it is bound up closely with the employment of men who are members of the same family units. We have seen that the cause of children's being pressed into industry, as well as the eagerness of women to work overtime in the shops and factories, is due to economic pressure. The seat of this pressure, doubtless with few exceptions, lies in the inability of husbands and fathers to earn a sufficient living, or to their sickness from overwork or exposure, or to their

death. This is true also in the case of industrial homework, where, again, economic necessity is the unrelenting goad to which women and children are forced to respond.1 Thus while we are stressing the need for vigor in the mothers of the race, the necessity for sound fathers must not be overlooked. For it is not enough for a child to be healthy at birth. Wholesome environment and proper care are necessary to the second important half of the process of its growth. Studies of the Federal Children's Bureau show high correlation between the earnings of fathers and infant mortality, the number of infant deaths decreasing perceptibly as fathers' earnings increase.2

Moreover the high death rate of men from tuberculosis is a marked phenomenon in present-day life which menaces the economic status of their families to say nothing of the injury it inflicts upon society at large. Recent compilations show that between the ages of five and 20 years, girls are victims of tuberculosis a little more often than boys, the deaths per 100,000 persons running from 40 to 134 for girls and from 39 to 123 for boys. But beginning with the age of twenty, there is a very marked excess of deaths among men over women, ranging all the way from 20 per cent to 240 per cent. These facts are of such signal importance that the figures themselves may be given for the different age groups as compiled by the New York Tuberculosis Association. The data are only for New York City but since

1 Fathers of homeworking families, as discovered by the New York Factory Investigating Commission, are in the prime of their working lives, more than 63 per cent of them being between 20 and 45 years of age. 'Children's Bureau, United States Department of Labor, Infant Mortality, Results of a Field Study in Manchester, N. H., series no. 6, Bureau Publication No. 20, 1917. See also the recent comprehensive study by Robert M. Woodbury which is an analysis of the seven studies of the children's Bureau: Economic Factors in Infant Mortality, Journal of the American Statistical Association, June, 1924, pp. 137-155.