Encouraged by such success, the league now began to study the working conditions of girls employed in restaurants. It was found that in many cases these conditions were even worse than in the department stores. Girls of twenty years were found working as cooks from 6:30 in the morning to 11:30 at night, with no time off on Sundays or holidays! This meant 119 hours a week, more than twice the time the law permits for factory employees. Other girls, employed as waitresses, were serving every day from 7:30 a. m. to 10:30 p. m., or 105 hours each week! In going back and forth, they walked several miles a day, carrying heavy trays at the same time. In rush hours they worked at a constant nervous tension, for speed is one of their requirements. And they must not only remember a dizzying list of orders, but must fill them quickly and keep their temper under the exactions of the most rasping customer. Based on such findings, the Consumers’ League of New York caused the framing of a bill by which the hours of women in restaurants were limited to 54 hours weekly, which gave the girls one day of rest in seven, and prohibited their working between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. In October, 1917, this bill became a law. In a number of other states minimum wage laws have also been secured. The Consumers’ League of Philadelphia took pains to investigate conditions in the silk mills of Pennsylvania. It was found that besides overwork and underpay there were often other evils, due to an erring as well as inhuman policy on the part of the employers. Like the owners of the department stores many of these men were possessed by the idea that the right to sit down would encourage slow work and laziness. Accordingly the girls in these mills were forced to stand from early morning till late at night, day after day, and month after month. The secretary of the Consumers’ League, who, under an assumed name, worked for some time in various mills, in order to study conditions, wrote: “The harmful effect of continuous standing, upon young and growing girls, is too well established a fact to require any elaboration. In addition to the permanent ill effects, much immediate and unnecessary suffering, especially in hot weather, is inflicted by the prohibition of sitting. I could always detect the existence of this rule by a glance at the stocking-feet of the workers, and at the rows of discarded shoes beneath the frames. For after a few hours the strain upon the swollen feet becomes intolerable, and one girl after another discards her shoes.”— Another harsh and very common practice of employers is to cover the lower sashes of the windows with paint, and to fasten them so that they cannot be raised in hot weather. This is done “so that the girls don’t waste time looking out.” The cruelty of these unnecessary rules is often aggravated by a most amazing lack of the common decencies and necessities of cleanliness.