d, they sometimes even
prefer the factory and the excitement of their surroundings to the
dreary and forbidding prospect of their desolate tenements. One
unnatural result of women's work in factories is the reversal of the
positions respectively of husband and wife in the home. It is not an
extraordinary occurrence for women to go out to the factories and
earn the bread of the family, while the men remain at home to mind the
babies and care for the house. This begetting of shiftlessness in men,
who are buoyed up to the point of self-supporting labor only by
the dependence of their families upon them, is an incidental but a
significant result of factory life upon women. It is seriously to be
doubted that, in the aggregate earnings of the family, there is any
real compensation for the binding of wives and children to the wheel
of toil. It has been observed by careful students of industrial
conditions that, for one reason or another, the maximum wage of a
family and the degree of comfort in their living are not, ordinarily,
greater than that of the family whose sole wage earner is the husband.

There is not a concurrence of views as to the wisdom of special
legislation with regard to the industrial place of women. Some see
in the various acts passed to regulate the circumstances of their
employment a distinct gain, while others view all such enactments as
a regrettable interference of the state in a matter where it is not
capable of taking cognizance of all the circumstances involved and of
displaying the broadest wisdom in dealing with the subject. Then, too,
it is objected on the part of some that sex legislation is unwise of
itself. The women themselves have not always looked with favor upon
the passage of acts for the regulation of their labor, and often
complain of such as an infringement of their personal privileges as
adults. They complain that the competition of labor is already severe,
and that by imposing upon them the limitations of certain acts the
difficulty of making a subsistence is increased. They complain against
the association of female with child labor, and assert that the
conditions are dissimilar and the abuses to be corrected cannot be
classed under the same legislative conditions. Industrial legislation
was first directed to the correction of offences against women
on account of their sex, but the later enactments, and those most
complained of, were resented because of their making the securing of a