These exceptions have come in various ways.  There is first, the eight-hour limitation in public employment, required in federal employment in 1868, really effective since 1892, and now in force likewise in about two thirds of the states.  In almost the same jurisdictions—­national, state and municipal—­eight hours is the legal day on work done in private business for the governments.  Work on railroads and street railways, particularly in the direct operation of trains, such as the work of dispatchers, signal men, and trainmen, is subjected to a large variety of regulative measures, hours being limited in some cases to 8, in others to 9, 10, 12, or 16, and in a number of cases a specified minimum number of hours of rest is required after the maximum hours of labor.  These laws are primarily for the protection of the public, but they afford a protection to the employee much needed, as many well-authenticated cases of excessive and exhausting hours demonstrate.

The limitation of hours has very recently been extended to many private businesses in which exceptional conditions exist affecting the health of the workers or the safety of the public.  This development has occurred almost entirely since the United States Supreme Court in 1898 (Holden vs.  Hardy) sustained a Utah statute limiting to eight the hours of labor in underground mines.  Now 8 hour laws in certain specified cases are found applying to mines, smelters, tunnels, and a variety of other kinds of work, and in a few cases the limit is 9, 10, or 11 hours.

Sec. 8. #Broader aspects of this legislation#.  The subject took on a new aspect when the legislature of Oregon, in 1913, declared broadly that “no person shall be hired, nor permitted to work for wages, under any conditions or terms, for longer hours or days of service than is consistent with his health and physical well-being and ability to promote the general welfare by his increasing usefulness as a healthy and intelligent citizen,” and fixed ten hours as the limit of work consistent with such a measure of health and welfare, in work in any mill, factory, or manufacturing establishment.  This law was sustained by the Supreme Court of that state and was carried on appeal to the United States Supreme Court.[6] In support of the law there was presented a voluminous brief giving a most impressive body of evidence from scientific and from practical business sources, to show the many evils, popularly unsuspected or underestimated, that result from long hours even in industries of no exceptional hazards.[7] Physiological and psychological tests demonstrate that the fatigue following more than a moderate working period not only reduces immediate efficiency, but so poisons the system that greater liability to accident, disease, intemperance, immorality, and premature decay, results.