THE NECESSARY SEQUEL OF CHILD-LABOR LAWS 319
recorded against the state of New Jersey. The child-labor law of 1904 repealed the older law of 1892, under which the employment of all women and minors up to the age of eighteen years had been prohibited after 6 p. M., and after noon on Saturdays, except in the manufacture of glass and of canned goods, and the preserving of perishable fruit. This statute, unexcelled by any other (barring its unfortunate exception), was sacrificed in the effort to obtain better protection for younger children. Workers over sixteen years, from being safeguarded by one of the most enlightened measures devised, are now left entirely without legis- lative protection.
If the example of New Jersey shows how one state has retro- graded through a lack of effort to retain its wise legislation, Massachusetts has lately illustrated how an alert public interest may carry through and preserve beneficent laws. The provision restricting women's labor to fifty-eight hours in one week in manufacture was extended to include mercantile establishments in 1901. But this valuable statute was suspended, and the employment of women in retail stores was allowed for unlimited hours at precisely the season when protection is most urgently needed during the rush of the holiday season in December. Public condemnation of an exception so susceptible of abuse grew, until in 1904 the exception permitting December overwork was repealed. Only one year later, in 1905, an attempt was made to legalize again the unlimited hours in stores during December. Unable to obtain this wholesale exception, certain merchants attempted to secure at least some modification of the law. They asked the legislature to authorize unrestricted hours for women during part of December, if not the whole month. They asked that women over twenty-one years of age be exempted from the law, and, failing to secure these exceptions, they wished the law to be suspended during December in all the state of Massachusetts outside of Boston. These requests were refused, and the legislature, persuaded of the gain to employees from the one year's enforcement of the law, preserved it intact.
The new (1905) law of Pennsylvania deals with overwork at the Christmas season in the same way, by limiting each day's
