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Making the Case for Night Work Legislation in Progressive Era New York, 1911–19151
By John Thomas McGuire, Tompkins-Cortland Community College
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Introduction
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In 1907 the New York Court of Appeals considered a bindery company's challenge to a night work law passed by New York's legislature in 1898 and amended in 1903. The statute stated that "no female shall be employed, permitted, or suffered to work in any factory in this state before six o'clock in the morning, or after nine o'clock in the evening of any day." The outcome of the case was preordained, for New York's highest court was famous for advocating the legal "freedom of contract" principle, which negated state efforts to limit workers' hours. From 1878 through 1904 the Court of Appeals had held that any restriction on laborers' hours was unconstitutional. The only exception, Lochner v. New York, had been reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal.2 |
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The night work case, known as People v. Williams, continued the Court of Appeals's trend against labor legislation. In declaring the night work statute unconstitutional, the court declared—implausibly given the absence of women suffrage in New York State—that "[m]en and women now stand alike in their constitutional rights and there is no warrant for making any discrimination between them with respect to the liberty...of contract." The judges also dismissed the state's argument that night work legislation amounted to a legitimate measure for the protection of women workers' health. "[We] find nothing in the language of the [night work statute] which suggests the purpose of promoting health," the court stated, "except as it might be inferred that for a woman to work during the forbidden hours of night would be unhealthful."3 |
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Florence Kelley, the influential general secretary of the National Consumers' League (NCL), fumed at what she called an incompetent defense of the night work statute by the New York State Attorney General's Office. "There has been no argument on this extraordinarily important case," Kelly noted in disgust. The State of New York's brief did not even refer to the Oregon Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold a women's hours law in the ongoing Muller v. Oregon case, which was defended by the NCL legal team.4 When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Muller the next year, the labor legislation movement received a significant victory. Cases involving legislation for working women had followed a convoluted path before Muller, which held the potential for turning the legal tide in favor of worker protection. Muller v. Oregon led to the widespread adoption of women's hours laws; by 1913 twenty-four states possessed such laws on their statute books.5 In addition, the success of the famous "Brandeis brief," prepared by Kelley and the NCL's research secretary, Josephine Goldmark, in cooperation with Boston attorney Louis Brandeis, set a precedent for courts to pay attention to actual labor conditions, rather than retreating into the abstractions of contract principles. Not all reformers welcomed the decision. Some women labor leaders disliked the decision's reliance on the alleged "fundamental weak[nesses]" of their gender.6 Nevertheless Kelley and her colleagues believed the Muller case set a clear precedent in favor of women's labor legislation, which in turn could be used as an entering wedge for the inclusion of all workers under the state's protection.7 |
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