The advantages of an eight-hour day with rest at night for women and children have been summed up as follows:
1.—Where the working day is short, the workers are less predisposed to diseases arising from fatigue. They are correspondingly less in danger of being out of work, for sickness is in turn one of the great causes of unemployment.
2.—Accidents have diminished conspicuously wherever working hours have been reduced.
3.—The workers have better opportunity for continuing their education out of working hours. Where they do this intelligently they become more valuable and are correspondingly less likely to become victims of unemployment.
4.—A short working day established by law tends automatically to regularize work. The interest of the employer is to have all hands continuously active, and no one sitting idly waiting for needles, or thread, or materials, or for machines to be repaired. Every effort is bent towards having work ready for every hour of every working day in the year. In unregulated industry, on the contrary, there are cruel alternations of idleness and overwork.
5.—For married women wage-earners it is especially necessary to have the working day short and work regular. For when they leave their workplace it is to cook, sew, and clean at home, sometimes even to care for the sick.—
In the movement for an eight-hour day for the women workers its advocates have already succeeded in Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Porto Rico, and Mexico. The eight-hour day has also been secured for all employees of the U. S. Government and for the women and workmen of a large number of the states.
EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK.
That women are entitled to equal pay with men for equal work, was recognized by the ancient Babylonians five or six thousand years ago. The justice of this demand is so self-evident, that it would hardly seem to need any discussion. Notwithstanding all labor organizations have been compelled to place it on their program, as many factory owners employed the cheaper woman-and child-labor only in order to underbid and reduce the wages of the male laborers. As female laborers have been much more poorly organized than men, they have been less capable of maintaining their claims.
The first equal opportunity and equal pay laws were passed in the State of Washington. In 1890 a section was added to her Labor Laws reading as follows: "Hereafter in this state every avenue of employment shall be open to
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