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for children of poor families who could not support them. The Consumers' League was attached to that and was attached to all child labor bills that were proposed and they were proposing some themselves.

The fifty-four hour bill for women was introduced about four years before I came into the Consumers' League. I didn't invent the idea. They were also trying to get a bill to require that there should be seats for women employees in department stores and also the use of them freely permitted. That was due to the reaction of the women of the board to seeing young girls and older women both standing behind counters looking as though they were plain suffering, with drawn faces, black under the eye, and even when there were no customers not being allowed to do so much as sit down on the edge of a drawer or a box or anything. They were to stand up alert to meet customers. There were long hours in department stores and the introduction of seats was fought as though it were going to ruin the department store business. I'll never forget the Bloomingdale Brothers who were just wild against it. They went up to the legislature in cohorts to say that it would ruin their business, and so forth and so on.

These were the principal bills that the Consumers' League at that time was concerned about. In those days