ABSTRACT
Protective legislation refers to state intervention in labor-management relations for the purpose of ameliorating the terms and conditions of employment. The rapid growth of American industry after the Civil War and the presence of laboring women in it spurred efforts to safeguard their health and morals by new state laws. In 1890 there were approximately four million women in the American labor force. Working in factories, laundries, department stores, and as domestic servants, they represented 17 percent of those employed and 18.2 percent of the female population of the United States. Their jobs were most often unskilled, segregated, dead end, and mind numbing. Their pay was most often below subsistence; their work week averaged fifty-four hours. In the factories and sweatshops of American cities, the noise level was often deafening, the machinery dangerous, and the building poorly lighted and ventilated and unsanitary. In old and new buildings, women's work was speeded up by payment for piece goods and menaced by fire.
