140
SEX IN INDUSTRY.
It is hence essential, that such enactments should he made and prosecuted as shall best establish the condition of things that should be ; and it is to such well-considered and efficient enactments that we must look for the prevention of much that now affects most unfavorably the condition of working- people, and especially women and children. Provision for the due inspection of, and inquiry into, the real conditions of labor, is naturally indicated as the initial desideratum of such law, and in this Commonwealth is especially necessary.
What is needed is the existence of inspectors of labor concomitants, with laws sufficiently regulative of those conditions, and power in the inspectors acting under those laws to maintain them as they should be. But inasmuch as the inspector, without law to establish what is evil and what good, is useless, though with it most potent, the law becomes the chief agent in the work of reform ; and it is to the wise creation and the subsequent execution of these laws that we must look for an improvement.