Continental legislation has gone far beyond us in all these important particulars. In most countries the conditions surrounding the labor of women, particularly married women, are carefully regulated by law. She is not allowed to go back to the mill for a certain period after childbirth, and in many more particular respects her health is carefully looked after. Such legislation would possibly be impossible to enforce with our notions in America. The most interesting of all is perhaps the attempt made in the State of Connecticut within a few years to improve social conditions by providing that no married woman should be employed in factories at all. The bill was not, of course, carried, but it raises a most interesting sociological question. Ruskin probably would have been in favor of it. He described as the very last act of modern barbarism for the woman to be made "to shriek for a hold of the mattock herself." It was argued in Connecticut that the employment of married women injured the health of the children, which is perfectly true. Indeed, the death-rate in England is very largely determined by the fact whether their mothers are employed in mills or not. It was also argued that her competition with man merely halved his wages; that if no women were employed, the men would get much higher wages. On the other side it was argued that the effect of the law would be largely immoral because it would simply prevent women from getting married. Knowing that after marriage they would get no employment, they would simply dispense with the marriage ceremony; for it is obvious that under such legislation a man living with a woman unmarried could get double wages, which would be halved the moment he made her his wife. This last was evidently the view which prevailed; and so far as I know, no such law has in the civilized world yet been enacted, though there is doubtless a much stronger social prejudice against women entering ordinary employments in some countries than in others.