hours a day, knowing that the end was nervous breakdown, and decrease
of earning power.

"I am a waitress," said Miss Maloney, "and I work ten hours a day. In
that time a waitress who is tolerably busy _walks_ ten miles, and the
dishes she carries back and forth aggregate in weight fifteen hundred to
two thousand pounds. Don't you think eight hours a day is enough for a
girl to walk?"

Only one thing stood in the way of the passage of the bill after that
day. The doubt of its constitutionality proved an obstacle too grave
for the friends of the workers to overcome. It was decided to
substitute a ten-hour bill, an exact duplicate of the "Oregon Standard"
established by the Supreme Court of the United States. The principle of
limitation upon the hours of women's work once established in Illinois,
the workers could proceed with their fight for an eight-hour day.

The manufacturers lost their fight, and the ten-hour bill became a law
of the State of Illinois. The Manufacturers' Association, through the
W.C. Ritchie Paper Box Manufactory, of Chicago, immediately brought suit
to test the constitutionality of the law. Two Ritchie employees, Anna
Kusserow and Dora Windeguth, made appeal to the Illinois courts. Their
appeal declared that they could not make enough paper boxes in ten hours
to earn their bread, and that their constitutional rights freely to
contract, as well as their human rights, had been taken away from them
by the ten-hour law.

There was a terrible confession, on the part of the employers, involved
in this protest against the ten-hour day, a confession of the wretched
state of women's wages in the State of Illinois. If women of mature