298 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Statutes just in proportion as it cooperates through volunteer agencies with the officials who write these reports ; for in the absence of such tangible evidence of the existence of enlightened and organized public opinion, the story of honest officials hounded out of office, of weak ones bribed, and of incompetents retained permanently in place is one of the black chapters of industrial history.
The National Consumers' League acts upon the proposition that, to constitute an effective demand for goods made under right conditions, there must be numbers of consumers sufficiently large to assure purchases steady and considerable enough to compensate for the expense incurred by humane employers. For this purpose the National Consumers' League has estab- lished a permanent office in New York city, and has entered upon a systematic work of organization of state leagues in addition to those of New York, Pennsylvania, Massachuetts, and Illinois which were in existence before it, and themselves consti- tute it. The National Consumers' League undertakes for the present year to investigate a single sharply defined branch of industry, as an experiment to determine the power of the pur- chaser when organized for a definite purpose. To manufacturers in that branch — women's white muslin underwear — the National Consumers' League offers the use of its label and the standard on which this rests, and pledges itself to advertise widely and persistently the humane conditions existing in the factories approved by it. The standard adopted for the present embraces four requirements, viz.: that all goods must be manufactured by the manufacturer on his own premises ; that all the require- ments of the state factory law must be complied with ; that no children under sixteen years of age shall be employed; that no overtime shall be worked. It is hoped that within a reasonable time it may be possible to include a requirement as to minimal wages ; the four which have been adopted are already realized in the best factories which have been found in the branch of manu- facture under consideration.
Since the exodus of manufacture from the home, the one great industrial function of women has been that of the purchaser.
