issected the
bill. He had little faith, it is true, in legislative interference with
private contracts. "But," he asks, "who can seriously doubt that it is
the duty of the Commonwealth to see that the tender frames of its youth
are not shattered by excessively protracted toil?.... Will any one
pretend that ten hours per day, especially at confining and monotonous
avocations which tax at once the brain and the sinews are not quite
enough for any child to labor statedly and steadily?" The consent of
guardian or parent he thought a fraud against the child that could be
averted only by the positive command of the State specifically limiting
the hours of child labor.

In the following year Pennsylvania enacted a law declaring ten hours
a legal day in certain industries and forbidding children under twelve
from working in cotton, woolen, silk, or flax mills. Children over
fourteen, however, could, by special arrangement with parents or
guardians, be compelled to work more than ten hours a day. "This act
is very much of a humbug," commented Greeley, "but it will serve a
good end. Those whom it was intended to put asleep will come back again
before long, and, like Oliver Twist, 'want some more.'"

The ten-hour movement had thus achieved social recognition. It had the
staunch support of such men as Wendell Phillips, Edward Everett, Horace
Greeley, and other distinguished publicists and philanthropists. Public
opinion was becoming so strong that both the Whigs and Democrats in
their party platforms declared themselves in favor of the ten-hour day.
When, in the summer of 1847, the British Parliament passed a ten-hour
law, American unions sent congratulatory messages to the British
workmen. Gradually the various States followed the example of New
Hampshire and Pennsylvania--New Jersey in 1851, Ohio in 1852, and Rhode
Island in 1853--and the "ten-hour system" was legally established.

But it was one thing to write a statute and another to enforce it.
American laws were, after all, based upon the ancient Anglo-Saxon
principle of private contract. A man could agree to work for as many
hours as he chose, and each employer could drive his own bargain. The
cotton mill owners of Allegheny City, for example, declared that they
would be compelled to run their mills twelve hours a day. They would
not, of course, employ children under twelve, although they felt deeply
concerned for the widows who would thereby lose the wages of their
child