The texts of their decisions, denying the constitutionality of protective measures, are amazing in the ignorance they display,--ignorance of industrial conditions surrounding women; ignorance of the physical effects of certain kinds of labor on young girls; ignorance of the effect of women's arduous toil on the birth rate; ignorance of moral conditions in trades which involve night work; ignorance of the injury to the home resulting from the sweated labor of tenement women.

In brief, the learned judges, when they write opinions involving the health, the happiness, the very lives of women workers, might be writing about the inhabitants of another planet, so little knowledge do they display of the real facts.
We have seen how the women of the Consumers' League taught the United States Supreme Court something about working women; showed them a few of the calamities resulting from the unrestricted labor of women and immature girls.

The Supreme Court's decision forever abolished the old fallacy that the American Constitution _forbids_ protective legislation for women workers.

It remains for women's organizations in the various States to educate local courts up to the knowledge that community interest _demands_ protective legislation.
Following the decision of the Supreme Court in the Oregon case, which flatly contradicted the decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, the working women of Illinois began their educational campaign.

They had now, for the first time, a fighting chance to secure the restoration of their shortened work day.