n); Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington
(eighteen).]

The hours for railroad and telegraph operators are limited in several
States, but rather for the purpose of protecting the public safety
than the employees themselves.[1] The following other trades are
prohibited to women or girls: Boot-blacking,[2] or street trades
generally;[3] work upon emery wheels, or wheels of any description in
factories (Michigan), and in New York no female is allowed to operate
or use abrasives, buffing wheels, or many other processes of polishing
the baser metals, or iridium; selling magazines or newspapers in any
public place, as to girls under sixteen,[4] public messenger service
for telegraph and telephone companies as to girls under nineteen.[5]

[Footnote 1: Colorado, New York.]

[Footnote 2: District of Columbia, Wisconsin.]

[Footnote 3: District of Columbia, Wisconsin.]

[Footnote 4: New York, Oklahoma, Wisconsin.]

[Footnote 5: Washington.]

Leaving now the question of general employment, where no general laws
limiting time or price would seem to be constitutional, except in
certain cases as to the employment of women and in all cases that of
children, and going to special occupations, we shall find quite a
different principle; for in a special occupation known to be dangerous
or unhealthy, certainly if dangerous or unhealthy to the general
public, it has always been the custom and has always been
constitutional with us to control conditions by statute. The question
of what is a dangerous or unhealthy occupation to the public rather
than merely to the persons employed is, of course, a difficult one;
and the Supreme Court of the United States have split so closely
on this point that they have in Utah decided that mining was an
occupation dangerous to the public health, and in New York that
the baking of bread was not. That is to say, that the condition of
bakeshops bore no relation to the general health of the community. One
might, perhaps, have expected that they would have decided each case
the other way; but we must take our decisions as we get them from the
Supreme Court, reserving our dissent for the text-books. In any event,
it can be seen that the line is very close, certainly in the case of
adult male labor. The same statute as to mines existed in Colorado
that the United States Supreme Court sustained in Utah. The Colorado
Supreme Court had declared it unconstitutional, and after the decision
of the Uni