Page "Charles Evans Hughes" Paragraph 14

On social issues, Hughes strongly supported relatively limited social reforms.

He endorsed the Page-Prentice Act of 1907, which set an eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week for factory workers — but only for those under the age of sixteen.

By employing the well-established legal distinction between ordinary and hazardous work, the governor also won legislative approval for a Dangerous Trades Act that barred young workers from thirty occupations.

To enforce these and other regulations, in 1907 Hughes reorganized the Department of Labor and appointed a well-qualified commissioner.

Two years later, the governor created a new bureau for immigrant issues in the Department of Labor and appointed reformer Frances Kellor to head it.