When the original Consumers' League undertook its first piece of
legislation in behalf of women workers the members knew that they were
right, but they had very few reasons to offer in defense of their
claim. The New York League and all of the others have been collecting
reasons ever since. To-day they have a comprehensive and systematized
collection of reasons why women should not work long hours; why they
should not work at night; why manufacturing should not be carried on in
tenements; why all home wage-earning should be forbidden; why the speed
of machines should be regulated by law; why pure-food laws should be
extended; why minimum wage rates should be established.

In the headquarters of the National League in New York City a group of
trained experts work constantly, collecting and recording a vast body of
facts concerning the human side of industry. It is ammunition which
tells. One single blast of it, fired in the direction of a laundry in
Portland, Oregon, two years ago, performed the wonderful feat of blowing
a large hole through the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States.

There was a law in Oregon which decreed that the working day of women in
factories and laundries should be ten hours long. The law was constantly
violated, especially in the steam laundries of Portland. One night a
factory inspector walked into the laundry of one Curt Muller, and found
working there, long after closing time, one Mrs. Gotcher. The inspector
promptly sent Mrs. Gotcher home and arrested Mr. Muller.

The next day in court Mr. Muller was fined ten dollars. Instead of
paying the fine he appealed, backed up in his action by the other
laundrymen of Portland, on the ground that the ten-hour law for women
workers was unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment to the