PRIDE IN PETTICOATS

The determined opposition of New York women to bills now before the Assembly, providing for a forty-eight hour week, minimum wage, and the further prohibition of night work for women, has proved a great surprise to those welfare workers who have been most active in the movement. The Women's Equal Opportunity League of New York has declared that the sex does not relish nor need "the so-called 'protection' of discriminatory legislation". A committee of working women appeared at Albany and urged the repeal of the laws prohibiting night work, asserting that they can stand the strain as well as men.

Thus does the restless sex pursue the will-o'-the-wisp of Equality. The curious thing is that woman and child labor laws have always been regarded as beneficial to the employee, and as such have been fought tooth and nail by the "moneyed interests. "Indeed, those states which load in such legislation have always been considered as the most progressive. Now that she has discovered that it is all a gigantic conspiracy on the part of the male population to keep her in bondage, emancipated Woman is determined to cast off these chains as well. She likes to think that she is the equal of Man in every way; but one suspects that deep down in her heart she is not quite sure. Perhaps that is why she is so dogmatic about it and so relentless in her pursuit of the outward signs. Having claimed so much, the honor and self-respect of the sex demand that it refuse everything in the remotest degree resembling a "favor", lest it be construed as an acknowledgement of weakness.

Yet it is hard to believe that we have been on the wrong track for so many years. We must not overlook the fact that woman labor legislation has a social as well as an economic significance. So when the feminine craze for "equality" goes so far as to throw away all the hard-won advantages gained through years of struggle, it is very like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.