the Christmas trade, satisfy their customers, and at the same time, dismiss each set of girls at the end of their ten-hour period.  To meet the necessities of the case a staff of extra hands was engaged by each of the large department stores.  This was a common arrangement.  The regular girls worked from half-past eight till seven o’clock, with time off for lunch.  The extra hands came on in the forenoon at eleven o’clock and worked till ten in the evening, with supper-time off.  Certain of the stores varied the plan somewhat, by giving two hours for lunch.  These long recesses are not without their disadvantages.  They mean still a very long day on the stretch, and besides, where is a girl to spend the two hours?  She cannot go home, and it is against the law for her to be in the store, for in the eye of the law, if she remains on the premises, she is presumably at work, and if at work, therefore being kept longer than the legal ten hours.

That a law which had been so vigorously opposed should on the whole have been observed so faithfully in the second largest city in the United States, that it should in that city have stood the test, at its very initiation, of the rush season, is a fact full of hope and encouragement for all who are endeavoring to have our laws keep pace with ideals of common justice.

Some time afterwards the constitutionality of the law was tested in the courts.  Since then, complaints have died away.  There is no record of trading establishments having been compelled to remove to another state, and we no longer even hear of its being a ruinous handicap to resident manufacturers.  Even reactionary employers are now chiefly concerned in putting off the impending evil, as they regard it, of an eight-hour day, which they know cannot be very far off, as it has already arrived on the Pacific Coast.

If the acquiescence of Illinois employers was satisfactory, the effect upon the girls was remarkable and exceeded expectations.  During that Christmas week, the clerks were tired, of course, but they were not in the state of exhaustion, collapse, and physical and nervous depletion, which they had experienced in previous years.  This bodily salvation had been expected.  It was what organized women had pleaded for and bargained for, what the defending lawyers, Mr. Louis D. Brandeis and Mr. William J. Calhoun had urged upon the judges, when the Supreme Court of Illinois had been earlier called upon to pass upon the validity of the original ten-hour law, although department-store employes had not been included within the scope of its protection.

But the girls were more than not merely worn-out to the point of exhaustion.  Most of them were more alive than they had ever been since first they started clerking.  They were happy, and surprised beyond measure at their own good fortune.  Those juniors who could just remember how different last Christmas had been, those seniors whose memories held such searing recollections of many preceding Christmases, were one in their rejoicing and wonderment.  They caught a dim vision of a common interest.  Here was something which all could share.  That one was benefited did not mean another’s loss.