The only question in this case is whether or not a paid fire department, maintained by a municipal corporation in this State, comes within the provisions of several laws establishing an eight-hour day. The constitution (art. 20, sec. 17) provides that the time of service of all "laborers, workmen, or mechanics" employed upon any public works by the State, a county, or a municipality is eight hours only. We think it is perfectly obvious that a fireman is not either a laborer, workman, or mechanic as referred to in that section. Section 3245 of the Political Code contains the provision that eight hours constitutes a legal day's work in all cases where the same is performed under the authority of the State, or of any city or county within the State, and that a stipulation to that effect must be made a part of all contracts to which the State, county, or city is a party. Section 653c of the Penal Code provides that the time of service of any laborer, workman, or mechanic employed upon any public works, or upon any works for the State, shall be limited to eight hours a day, and imposes a penalty upon anyone violating this provision. Section 142 of the Bakersfield charter provides that the time of service of any laborer, workman, or mechanic employed upon any public works or upon work done for the city, shall be limited and restricted to eight hours a day. All of these provisions have substantially the same meaning.

It is the opinion of the court that they do not refer to or include firemen in a paid fire department of a city, but, on the contrary, refer to persons engaged as workmen of some kind upon public work, or employed by some city or other public authority, and actually engaged in labor. The court below correctly held that they do not apply to firemen of the city of Bakersfield.

HOURS OF LABOR-RAILROADS ADAMSON LAW-EFFECT OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN RAILROAD AND ITS EMPLOYEES-Fort Smith & W. R. Co. et al. v. Mills et al., United States Supreme Court (June 1, 1920), 40 Supreme Court Reporter, page 526.-The Fort Smith & Western Railroad Co. went into the hands of a receiver, Arthur Mills, the defendant. The company had an agreement with its employees regulating wages and hours of labor with which both parties were satisfied, and by which, though insolvent, the road was able to continue operation. Upon the passage of the Adamson eight-hour law by Congress, the receiver, by reason of threats of prosecution thereunder by the district attorney, proposed to substitute another agreement containing the much more onerous terms of the act. This action in equity was thereupon brought to prevent the receiver from complying with the act and to prevent the district attorney from prosecuting him. It was declared that if the act was permitted to apply to this case it was void under the fifth amendment to the Constitution, as taking property without due process of law. The district court dismissed the case, and upon appeal to the Supreme Court it was decided that the law did not apply to cases of this kind.

The opinion of the court as expressed by Mr. Justice Holmes is in part as follows:

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The act in question, known as the Adamson law, was passed to meet the emergency created by the threat of a general railroad strike. It fixed eight hours as a day's work and provided that for some months, pending an investigation, the compensation of employees of railroads subject to the act to regulate commerce should not be reduced below the present standard day's wage," and that time in excess of eight hours should be paid for pro rata at the same rate. The time has expired long since but the rights of the parties require a decision of the case.

In Wilson v. New, 243 U. S. 332, 37 Sup. Ct. 298 [Bul. No. 224, p. 144], it was decided that the act was within the constitutional power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States; that since, by virtue of the organic interdependence of different parts of the Union, not only comfort but life would be endangered on a large scale if interstate railroad traffic suddenly stopped, Congress could meet the danger of such a stoppage by legislation, and that, in view of the public interest, the mere fact that it required an expenditure to tide the country over the trouble would not of itself alone show a taking of property without due process of law. It was held that these principles applied no less when the emergency was caused by the combined action of men than when it was due to a catastrophe of nature; and that the expenditure required was not necessarily unconstitutional because it took the form of requiring the railroad to pay more, as it might have required the men to take less, during the short time necessary for an investigation ordered by the law.

But the bill in Wilson v. New raised only the general objections to acts that were common to every railroad. In that case it was not necessary to consider to what extremes the law might be carried or what were its constitutional limits. It was not decided, for instance, that Congress could or did require a railroad to continue in business at a loss. See Brooks-Scanlon Co. v. Railroad Commission of Louisiana, 251 U. S. 396, 40 Sup. Ct. 183. It was not decided that there might not be circumstances to which the act could not be applied consistently with the fifth amendment, or that the act in spite of its universal language must be construed to reach literally every carrier by railroad subject to the act to regulate commerce. It is true that the first section of the statute purports to apply to any such carrier, and the third to the compensation of railway employees subject to this act. But the statute avowedly was enacted in haste to meet an emergency, and the general language necessary to satisfy the demands of the men need not be taken to go further than the emergency required or to have been intended to make trouble rather than to allay it. We can not suppose that it was meant to forbid work being done at a less price than the rates laid down, when both parties to the bargain wished to go on as before, and when the circumstances of the road were so exceptional that the lower compensation accepted would not affect the market for labor upon other roads. But that is the present case. An insolvent road has succeeded in making satisfactory terms with its men, enabling it to go on, barely paying its way, if it did so, not without impairing even the mortgage security, not to speak of its capital. We must accept the allega

tions of the bill and must assume that the men were not merely negatively refraining from demands under the act, but, presumably appreciating the situation, desired to keep on as they were. To break up such a bargain would be at least unjust and impolitic and not at all within the ends that the Adamson law has in view. We think it reasonable to assume that the circumstances in which, and the purposes for which the law was passed import an exception in a case like this.

HOURS OF LABOR-RAILROADS-ADAMSON LAW-SWITCH TENDER NOT COVERED-Coke v. Illinois Cent. R. Co., United States District Court, Western District of Tennessee (Jan. 17, 1919), 255 Federal Reporter, page 190.-H. P. Coke was employed by the railroad company as a switch tender. The duties of a switch tender are to open or close switches to facilitate the movements of trains and are given to one man in order to relieve the train crews of this work. Coke brought this action for $274, claiming that he was hired for $75 per month and that he was required to work 12 hours per day and that as a result of the Adamson law he was entitled to compensation for overtime. The Adamson law referred to provides that:

Beginning January 1, 1917, eight hours shall, in contracts for labor and service, be deemed a day's work and the measure or standard of a day's work for the purpose of reckoning the compensation for services of all employees who are now or may hereafter be employed by any common carrier by railroad and who are now or who may hereafter be actually engaged in any capacity in the operation of trains used for the transportation of persons or property on railroads.

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District Judge McCall in rendering judgment in favor of the employer gave in part the following opinion:

Broadly speaking, the act might be construed to include every employee of such railroad from president down to section hand, who was in any capacity actually engaged in doing those things necessary to the operation of trains, such as directing their operation in a supervisory way, maintaining the roadway, lining up switches for their operation, or aboard the trains manually operating them, etc.

Assuming, but not deciding, that plaintiff was actually engaged in some capacity in operation of trains, the question arises: Did Congress intend by the Adamson Act to include and provide for employees engaged in the work the plaintiff was doing? It is too much to say that the terms of the act are clear and unambiguous. In such circumstance it is well settled that in determining the scope, intention, and meaning of the acts of Congress, to give effect to them courts may properly have recourse to public documents and proceedings in Congress had pending the piece of legislation in question, and it may properly look at contemporaneous events, the situation as it existed, and as it was pressed upon the attention of the legislative body.

The court feels warranted in saying that it is of common knowledge derived from the message of the President pressing the prompt enactment of the law in question, delivered orally to the Congress, from the Congressional Record, as well as from all the great newspapers and periodicals of the day, that the Adamson law was enacted at the instance of four bodies of organized railway employees, to wit, Order of Railway Conductors, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers, and Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen. The members of these four organizations were all employees whose duties were discharged aboard railway trains, such as conductors, engineers, firemen, and railway trainmen, which latter term would include all those whose duties were performed "on the engines and on the cars." While it was thought by the four brotherhoods mentioned that the legislature provided for their best interest, and they demanded it, yet it is fair to say, judging from the Congressional Record, that it was enacted by Congress primarily to prevent a calamity to the country which was thought sure to follow in case it was not enacted, if the brotherhoods, in case it was not enacted, should carry into effect their declared purpose to call a strike and thus stop trains moving in interstate commerce and tie up the commercial interests of the country.

The validity of the act was before the Supreme Court of the United States in Wilson v. New, 243 U. S. 332, 37 Sup. Ct. 298 [Bul. No. 224, p. 144], wherein it was held to be constitutional. The point was made in that case that the act was void for unlawful inequality and arbitrary classification, in that it only included employees actually engaged in the operation of trains, and did not include other railroad employees. The Supreme Court sustained the classification on the ground that only those actually engaged in the operation of trains (not including switchmen) were threatening to strike, and that it was therefore proper to pass legislation which affected only those who were so threatening, apparently meaning thereby to say that the legislation applied only to the Order of Railway Conductors, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Engineers, and Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen.

Clearly the Adamson law does not apply to all employees of railroads engaged in interstate commerce, nor does it apply to all those who are actually engaged in doing some of the things necessary for the operation of trains. It would seem, therefore, reasonable and proper to follow the line of cleavage which the Congress intended to establish, as gathered from the contemporaneous history of events attending the consideration and passage of the law. When the act is thus considered in the light of the utterances of the President, the Congressional Record, the hearings before the Committee on Interstate Commerce, and the report of the Wage Commission, it appears that Congress was dealing with the four brotherhoods only, and intended the legislation to apply only to those doing the work performed by the brotherhoods. That is to say, to trainmen who worked "on the engines and in the cars." This conclusion is greatly strengthened by the language of the Supreme Court of the United States in Wilson v. New, supra.

HOURS OF LABOR OF WOMEN-EMPLOYMENT IN LAUNDRIES-COLLECTING STATIONS-District of Columbia v. Marshall, Police Court of the District of Columbia (Jan. 27, 1920), 48 Washington Lavo Reporter, page 86.—The District of Columbia brought a criminal charge against the defendant, who is the owner of a laundry, for the violation of sections 1, 4, and 5 of an act of Congress approved February 24, 1914, and entitled "An act to regulate the hours of employment and safeguard the health of females employed in the District of Columbia." This law limits the hours of labor of all female employees "employed in any manufacturing, mechanical, or mercantile establishment, laundry, hotel, or restaurant, or telegraph or telephone establishment or office, or by any express or transportation company in the District of Columbia" to eight per day or forty-eight per week. In addition to his plant, the defendant also maintains nine substations or branches at which soiled clothing is received and the cleaned clothing returned, but at which no washing or cleaning of any kind is engaged in. An employee in one of these substations was required or permitted to work longer than eight hours in one day, whereupon this prosecution was brought against the employer for the violation of the aforementioned act. He contended that the act being penal should be strictly construed, and so construed could not be held to include such employments as that at the collecting station. The court differed with this contention, and held that the act was a remedial statute and should therefore be liberally construed, but notwithstanding this attitude it held that the employment did not come within the purview of he law, the post of the employment not being in any true sense of the term a laundry.

HOURS OF LABOR OF WOMEN-HOTEL EMPLOYEES-EXEMPTION OF RAILROAD HOTELS AND EATING HOUSES-CONSTITUTIONALITY-Dominion Hotel (Inc.) v. State of Arizona, Supreme Court of the United States (Mar. 24, 1919), 39 Supreme Court Reporter, page 273.-Under a prosecution brought by the State of Arizona against the Dominion Hotel (Inc.) for the violation of a law of the State prohibiting the employment of women in hotels for longer periods than eight hours and providing also that said eight hours of service must be performed within a period of twelve hours, the defendant was found guilty. This decision was sustained by the State supreme court, and a writ of error was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States on the ground that the provision in the statute exempting railroad hotels from the application of the law denied to the defendant the equal protection of the laws, and was therefore under the fourteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution unconstitu