Constitution guarantees to every adult member of the community the right
freely to contract. A man or a woman may contract with an employer to
work as many hours a day, or a night, for whatever wages, in whatever
dangerous or unhealthful or menacing conditions, _unless_ "there is fair
ground to say that there is material danger to the public health or
safety, or to the health and safety of the employee, or to the general
welfare...." This is the legal decision on which most protective
legislation in the United States has been based.

Several years ago, in Illinois, a law providing an eight-hour day for
women was declared unconstitutional because nobody's health or safety
was endangered; and on the same grounds the same fate met a New York
law forbidding all-night employment of women.

So Mr. Curt Muller and the laundrymen of Portland, Oregon, had reason to
believe that they could attack the Oregon law. The case was appealed,
and appealed again, by the laundrymen, and finally reached the Supreme
Court of the United States. Then the Consumers' League took a hand.

The brief for the State of Oregon, "defendant in error," was prepared by
Louis D. Brandeis, of Boston, assisted by Josephine Goldmark, one of the
most effective workers in the League's New York headquarters. This brief
is probably one of the most remarkable legal documents in existence. It
consists of one hundred and twelve printed pages, of which a few
paragraphs were written by the attorney for the State. All the rest was
contributed, under Miss Goldmark's direction, from the Consumers'
League's wonderful collection of reasons why women workers should be
protected.

The League's reply to the Oregon laundrymen who asked leave to work