(2) Another phase of modern industrial injustice is the overlong hours of work still required in many industries. The race for cheapness of product has blinded manufacturers and the public to the cost in terms of human happiness. An eight-hour day is quite long enough to produce all that is necessary, with the aid of modern machinery; every man should be given a margin of leisure for education, recreation, and social life. And every man should be given the benefit of that one day's rest out of seven which is so precious a legacy to us from the Jewish religion.[Footnote: A joint legislative committee in Massachusetts in 1907 estimated that 222,000 persons in that State were working seven days in the week. Similar, or worse, conditions exist throughout the country.] Those industries that require continuous use of machinery should employ three complete shifts of workmen; and those that must be run every day in the week should have enough extra helpers man. This humanizing of hours cannot be done by individual action, where competition is sharp; but by legislation that bears equally upon all, a generous standard-the eight-hour day and six-day week -can be maintained, with hardship to none and a great increase in the health and happiness of the masses. Especially jealous should the law be for the welfare of women workers. In cotton mills in the South women work ten and twelve hours a day; in canneries in the North they work, during the short season, fifteen and eighteen hours a day, eighty or even ninety hours a week. Particularly should women be protected during the weeks before and after childbirth; as it is, women workers are often ruined in health for life, the rate of infant mortality is shockingly high, and the children that survive are usually subnormal. Girls through overwork are weakened too seriously to bear strong children- which, in any case, they have had no time or opportunity to learn how to nurture and rear. No doubt women should work, as well as men; if not in the home, then outside the home. But the contemporary economic pressure that bears so hard on so many girls and women must be eased not only for their sakes but for that of coming generations. [Footnote: Dorothy Richardson, The Long Day. S. Nearing, Social Adjustment, chap. X. J. Rae, Eight Hours for Work.]