Take another line. The manual of the labor laws enforced by the State Board of Labor and Industries, covers the enforcement of the laws relative to the education of minors, employment of minors, hours of labor, apprenticeship, hours of labor for women, health inspection, lighting, ventilation, cleanliness, guarding against dangerous machinery, work in tenement houses, etc.
The little book entitled "Woman Suffrage, History, Arguments, Results," tells all about the suffrage states and gives the good laws that have been enacted since women voted. It gives the impression that none such are passed in male suffrage States. It has just two words about Massachusetts; under the heading of "School Suffrage," it says, "Massachusetts—1879." Under California, however, it gives a list of the following laws and institutions:
Mothers' Pensions.
Minimum Wage.
Juvenile Court.
State Training School for Girls.
Teachers' Pension.
Weights and Measures.
Civil Service.
State Housing Commission.
Milk Inspection.
Tuberculosis.
Workingmen's Compensation.
Psychopathic Parole.
But it carefully omits to mention that Massachusetts has all of these, that some of them are much broader in scope, and that many are of longer years standing.
You go into the Western States, and you find that legislation is conducted on a different basis from what it is in Massachusetts. Altogether too frequently, bills are pigeon-holed; the bills can't be reported out of committee unless the chairman consents; and the result is that many bills never see the light. Here in Massachusetts law-making is better managed. The number of bills presented is large; 3,459 were printed during the session of 1914, and 2,802 were printed during the last session. Some of these were offered by women. A woman, as well as a man, can petition the Legislature. Every bill is referred to a committee; it is given a public hearing, is reported upon and action taken, one way or another; not one bill is pigeon-holed. The Massachusetts system of legislative procedure is not surpassed anywhere in the United States, and there are competent boards and officers who carry out the various laws. Many of the things the suffragists agitate about and think they need the franchise to bring to pass, they would find are already being administered at the present time if they would only look into the facts.
V
HOW MASSACHUSETTS FOSTERS PUBLIC WELFARE
MONICA FOLEY