to a
fixed number of hours a day and confined to six days a week, is
considered more desirable than housework. The result is that the
housewife is compelled to take for her employees only those who are
rejected by every other employer; the capable, independent, intelligent
American woman is hardly ever seen in domestic service.

In Washington, D.C., a law (the La Follette Eight Hour Law for Women in
the District of Columbia) was recently passed limiting to eight hours
a day and six days a week practically all work in which women are
industrially employed; "hotel servants" are included under the
provisions of this law, but "domestic servants in private homes" are
expressly excluded.

If this new law be considered a just and humane measure for women who
are business employees, and if business houses be compelled to observe
it, one naturally wonders why it should not prove to be an equally
just and humane law for women who work in private families, and why
should not the home be compelled to observe it too? Instead of being a
barrier to progress, the home ought to cooperate with the state in the
enforcement of laws for the amelioration of the condition of working
women. The home, being presided over by a woman, presumably of some
education and intelligence, should be a most fitting place in which to
apply a law designed to protect women against excessive hours of labor.

Why should housework in private homes be an exception to all other work?
Is it because some housewives say, in self justification and frequently
without an accurate knowledge of what it is to do housework week after
week without one day's release, that housework is easier than other
work? Is it easier? Is it not sometimes harder? However, it is not a
question of housework being harder or easier than other work, but of the
desirability of having it limited to eight hours a day and six days a
week. Why should the housewife be allowed to remain in such a state of
apathy in regard to the physical welfare of her household employees?

"Six days shalt thou labor" has all the sanction of scripture, of
morals, and of common experience. It is only fair that women who work in
private families should have one day out of seven as a day of rest, even
as their more fortunate sisters in the business world. If by adopting
such a law in the home the housewife found that her work was performed
far more efficiently and willingly than at present, would it not be as
much to