Two
common features characterized these laws, whether enacted or merely
proposed to the legislatures. There were none which did not permit of
longer hours than those named in the law, provided they were so
specified in the contract. A contract requiring ten or more hours a day
was perfectly legal. The eight-hour day was the legal day only "when the
contract was silent on the subject or where there is no express contract
to the contrary," as stated in the Wisconsin law. But the greatest
weakness was a lack of a provision for enforcement. New York's
experience is typical and characteristic. When the workingmen appealed
to Governor Fenton to enforce the law, he replied that the act had
received his official signature and he felt that it "would be an
unwarrantable assumption" on his part to take any step requiring its
enforcement. "Every law," he said, "was obligatory by its own nature,
and could derive no additional force from any further act of his."
In Massachusetts, however, the workingmen succeeded after hard and
protracted labor in obtaining an enforceable ten-hour law for women--the
first effective law of its kind passed in any American State.
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