A brief survey of the American legislation for the protection of women in industry will facilitate the discussion of the constitutional principles by which the action of legislatures is controlled. The following types of statutes should be distinguished: 1. Those which provide that no person shall be precluded, debarred or disqualified from any lawful occupation, profession or employment on account of sex. Illinois and Washington so provide by statute (making exceptions for military employment and public office), while California enacts the same principle in the form of an article of her constitution. A statute of this kind can at most have the effect of removing some supposed bar existing by virtue of law of custom. The statute of Illinois was in fact the consequence of a decision of the supreme court of that state which denied a woman a license to practise law, and against which the Supreme Court of the United States had been appealed to in vain.[46] The incorporation of the principle into the constitution will, on the other hand, control future as well as past legislation, and may prove an embarrassment in the way of carrying out other protective policies. The wording of the provisions does not seem to affect any possible disqualifications by reason of marriage and coverture. 2. Those which bar women from certain employments altogether. It is noteworthy that only five days after removing the disabilities of sex with reference to employment in general, Illinois prohibited the labor of women in coal mines, and the same prohibition is now found in the principal mining states (Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming). The other employment from which women are sometimes debarred (in about a dozen states) is the dispensing of intoxicating liquors. So under the liquor-tax law of New York (§31) no woman not a member of the keeper’s family may sell or serve liquor to be consumed on the premises. In California, under the constitutional provision above quoted, an ordinance making it a misdemeanor for a female to wait on any person in any dance cellar or barroom was held invalid,[47] but later on an ordinance prohibiting the sale of liquor in dance cellars or other places of amusement where females attend as waitresses was sustained,[48] as was also the refusal of licenses to those employing females,[49] upon the ground that the clause of the constitution did not prevent the prescribing of conditions upon which the business of retailing liquor shall be permitted to be carried on. The court evidently felt that the object to be gained justified a narrow construction of the constitution. 3. Statutes which prohibit the employment of women in cleaning machinery while in motion, or in work between moving parts of machinery. Such legislation, according to the digest of labor laws prepared by the United States Commissioner of Labor in 1907, is found in Missouri and West Virginia.