Some Massachusetts Laws" pamphlet.
Blackwell, Alice Stone. Pamphlet: "Some Massachusetts Laws.” [Boston: Woman's Journal, E.L. Grimes Company, Printers], 1914.
Pamphlet: 4-3/4" x 6-9/16"; [8] pp.; printed self-wrappers; uneven age-toning; rumpling at upper margin; 1/2" closed tear at left (through entire pamphlet); about very good.
Blackwell enumerates a number of ways in which Massachusetts laws fail to protect working women: "Every law for the special benefit of working women in Massachusetts is a law without teeth. Each is so worded that it can be readily evaded." For instance, Massachusetts law prohibits women working more than 10 hours a day or 54 hours a week, except "when the employment is by seasons"; i.e., employers may require women to work longer hours as long as the yearly average does not exceed 54 hours per week. Blackwell points out that though Massachusetts is "one of the oldest industrial States in the Union….half a dozen of the enfranchised States have gone ahead of Massachusetts in their legislation for women workers, with only a few years of effort…" Alice Stone Blackwell wrote a number of pamphlets published and distributed by the NAWSA; this pamphlet, however, was available only through the Woman's Journal. Consequently, it is extremely scarce. Not in the NAWSA Archive at the Library of Congress. OCLC notes only one holding—at the Library of Virginia. Neither Krichmar nor Franklin records the pamphlet.
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