can be made regular should be allowed for those in which it cannot. I do not want to be understood as condoning the excessive hours per day and per week that are now occasionally worked in those factories to which such an exception would apply. On the contrary they should be sharply restricted according to health requirements. But I believe that if those factories were allowed such variations from the general rule as would not be injurious to health, it would render the law more easily and generally enforcible as to them and would in fact reduce their hours of labor, and it would avoid the danger of an adverse decision from the courts as to the constitutionality of the provisions limiting the hours of women’s labor. It is not easy to see why any emergency provision should be regarded as in itself violating the principle of equality, but there may be some danger in not treating alike different emergencies which are entitled to equal consideration. The absence of an emergency clause may expose the law to the charge of creating unnecessary hardships and thereby creating an unreasonable interference with liberty. If however in this as in other matters perfect justice and adaptation of means to the end might be thought to require a more minute differentiation than our statutes provide, it should be borne in mind that one very legitimate element in considering the reasonableness of a statute is the possibility or facility of its administration. A certain degree of mechanical uniformity of rules is essential to the successful operation of any act. Experience has demonstrated that it is extremely difficult to control compliance with legal limitations of hours of labor, if the permitted number of hours may be arranged at any time within a range of fourteen or fifteen hours, or if the employer is permitted to employ two shifts of working women, or if he is allowed to distribute 54 or 60 hours through the week as he pleases. On the other hand Dr. Jacobi quotes the labor commissioner of New York as saying: “Except for the administrative reason that it makes it easier to enforce the prohibition against overtime, there is no present necessity in this state for the prohibition of night work by adult women. On the other hand, if enforced, it would deprive some mature working women, employed by night only at skilled trades, for short hours and for high wages, of all means of support. And the prohibition, in its application to factories only, seems rather one-sided when we consider that probably the hardest occupations of women, those of hotel laundresses and cleaners, are not limited as to hours in any way.”[69] The relevancy of administrative considerations has received very little judicial discussion in connection with the problem of discrimination, and deserves serious consideration. While important rights should not be allowed to be sacrificed to mere official convenience, effectiveness and even the