A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
History
A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.
Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
Women's rights -- History
The hours of labour
of children and the age at which they are allowed to work were largely
restricted. A National Children's Bureau, under the charge of Miss Julia
Lathrope, has been created at Washington; and Mrs. J. Borden Harriman
was appointed to the Industrial Relations Commission. The minuteness and
thoroughness of modern legislation for the protection of women may be
realised by noting that in 1913 alone New York passed laws that no girl
under sixteen shall in any city of the first, second, or third class
sell newspapers or magazines or shine shoes in any street or public
place; that separate wash rooms and dressing rooms must be provided in
factories where more than ten women are employed; that whenever an
employer requires a physical examination, the employee, if a female, can
demand a physician of her own sex; that the manufacture or repair for a
factory of any article of food, dolls' clothing, and children's apparel
in a tenement house be prohibited except by special permit of the Labor
Commission; that the State Industrial Board be authorised to make
special rules and regulations for dangerous employments; and that the
employment of women in canning establishments be strictly limited
according to prescribed hours.
The unmistakable trend of legislation in the United States is towards
complete equality of the sexes in all moral, social, industrial,
professional, and political activities.
In England the House of Commons rejected parliamentary suffrage for
women. Incensed at the repeated chicanery of politicians who
alternately made and evaded their promises, a group of suffragettes
known as the "militants" resorted to open violence. When arrested for
damaging property, they went on a "hunger strike," refusing all
nourishment. This greatly embarrassed the government, which in 1913
devised the so-called "Cat and Mouse Act," whereby those who are in
desperate straits through their refusal to eat are released temporarily
and conditionally, but can be rearrested summarily for failure to comply
with the terms of their parole. The weakness in the attitude of the
militant suffragettes is their senseless destruction of all kinds of
property and the constant danger to which they subject innocent people
by their outrages. If they would confine themselves to making life
unpleasant for those who have so often broken their pledges, they could
stand on surer ground. The English are commonly regarded as an orderly
people, especially by themselves. Nevertheless, it is true that hardly
any great reform has been achieved in England without violence. The men
of England did not secure the abolition of the "rotten-borough" system
and extensive manhood suffrage until, in 1831, they smashed the windows
of the Duke of Wellington's house, burned the castle of the Duke of
Newcastle, and destroyed the Bishop's palace at Bristol. In 1839 at
Newport twenty chartists were shot in an attempt to seize the town; they
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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