, among them Illinois, have provided that a woman is
entitled to all ordinary rights of property and contract "the same as"
a man. Under this provision, when laws were passed for the protection
of women, forbidding them to work more than a certain number of hours
per day, they were originally held unconstitutional. The so-called
women's-rights people (one could wish that there were a better or more
respectful word) seem themselves to be divided on this point. The more
radical resent any enforced inequality, industrial or social, between
the sexes. For instance, many States have statutes forbidding women or
girls to serve liquor in saloons or to wait upon table in restaurants
where liquor is served. Such statutes, obviously moral, are
nevertheless resented. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of the
United States has taken the conservative view, that there is a
difference both in physique and character between the sexes, as well
as different responsibilities and a different social interest, so that
it is still possible, as It has been possible in the past, to impose
by law special restrictions on the contracts of women. The law of
Oregon, therefore, not permitting them to make personal contract for
more than eight hours per day was sustained both in the State and the
Federal Supreme Courts; and a similar law by the highest court of
Illinois, reversing its own prior decision.[2] This matter is of such
interest and of such importance that it is frequently placed in State
constitutions, and it seems worth while to summarize their provisions.
The advanced position is now squarely put only in the constitution of
California, which provides that no person shall on account of sex
be disqualified from entering upon or pursuing any lawful business,
vocation, or profession. Such a constitution as this would, of course,
make it impossible even to pass such laws as the ones just mentioned
forbidding them to serve in restaurants, such employment being lawful
as to men. But no other State follows that extreme provision, and,
indeed, the clause in the constitution of Illinois seems now to have
been repealed.

[Footnote 1: Minor _v_. Happersett, 21 Wallace 166.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 227.]

As to property matters it may be broadly stated that they have in
general precisely the same rights that men have, and in several States
more; that is to say, a woman frequently has a larger interest in the
property of a man at his death, th