Divorce could be granted on the mere request of either one or both. The law provided for the care of the children in case parents could not come to an amicable decision, and declared all children born out of wedlock legitimate and equal in rights and obligations. There were various measures for the protection of children. The child-labor decree prohibited the employment of children under fourteen years of age, and while it was under discussion the Commissary of Labor proposed that the year following the age limit be raised to fifteen and eventually to twenty. This suggestion was not adopted, but it fitted in with the general program of education, which aimed to keep all the children of Russia in school until they had been given the opportunities that only a few of the aristocrats in the past had enjoyed. Women, and children under sixteen, were prohibited from night work; and there was an eight-hour law for workers, and a decree limiting the number of hours of employment a week to forty-eight. Among the social measures was decree thirty-four, which transferred the control of private hospitals to the government and obliged each industry to provide one hospital bed for each hundred workmen, and one maternity bed for each two hundred workwomen. Social insurance against injuries, sickness, and non-employment was also provided in an elaborately worked out decree. One of the early measures was a national grant of power to municipalities to commandeer all empty premises suitable for lodgings, and to billet in uncrowded apartments the residents of overcrowded dwellings. When the Soviet had completed decree thirty-one, the five classes in civil life had been abolished, and only one title was left in Russia--“Citizen of the Russian Republic.” CHAPTER XVI IN PLACE OF THE GUILLOTINE Above the gray mist of Petrograd in winter, the “terror” and the “guillotine” hung like threatening swords. Organized punishment was no part of the revolutionary scheme, but every group of revolutionists who took power discovered, to their distress, that it was easier to will people into a line of conduct than to make them follow it. The People’s Commissaries were beset by enemies on every side. There were traitors within the ranks, and honest and dishonest enemies without. There were the usual number of weak or unscrupulous men in uniform who find their way into every army and navy. All were engaged, one way or another, in trying to keep the poor, battered social machine from running. All the courts that refused to recognize the authority of the Soviet were promptly closed. The few remaining open were required to operate according to the decree of the People’s Commissaries. The decree provided that the court should decide all cases, in the name of the Russian Republic. It permitted the judges to be guided in their decisions by the old laws “to the extent in which they did not contradict the revolutionary conscience and the revolutionary conception of right.”