As the economic changes swept through America with the Industrial Revolution, so did society and the traditional roles of men and women. These changes hit the lower class women particularly hard because not only did they have to work long hours at a factory; they also had to maintain the household as traditions required of women. With all of these responsibilities that women now had, perhaps the strain hit women because rarely had they been required to do so much. Oregon saw this and created a law in 1903 that stated that women were only allowed to work a maximum of ten hours a day. Similar laws had been passed in other states so it made some people wonder, did the Oregon law violate the women’s freedom of contract implicit in the liberty protected by due process? In other states, people had broken these laws or brought them before the court claiming that the restraint on the number of hours was unconstitutional and the fourteenth amendment was used against the law. Although similar laws had been defeated by the Supreme Court’s ruling before Muller v. Oregon, that does not mean that they were previously unconstitutional and did not violate the fourteenth amendment for women’s freedom.The time of the Industrial Revolution allowed little room for smaller companies to make a name because the big businesses had monopolies over certain areas of industry. Therefore, for a person to make a name for himself, he had to do so with ambition, money, reputation, and inner strength. By reason of an owner not possessing these qualities, then by the rigors of business owning he would be mentally crushed by the amount of work that falls upon the owner’s shoulders. In addition, even though labor came cheaply to the wealthy owners, labor was still an issue because of the Unions that were forming to protect the rights of workers. Business owners in Oregon did not have to worry about overworking their employees because if...
