William Bauchop Wilson to Woodrow Wilson

The resolution and report of the Committee on Women's Work in War-Time, adopted by the delegates to the Sixth Biennial Convention of the National Women's Trade Union League, held in Kansas City June 4 to 9, inclusive, 1917, which you submitted to me, should be referred to the Council of National Defense so that they might ultimately reach the Departments of War and Navy, after being thoroughly canvassed by the Women in Industries Committee of the Committee on Labor. I am sure that is the disposition the National Women's Trade Union League expected to be made of them and that they were sent to you principally for your information.

The Act of June 19, 1912, expressly requires that certain contracts made by the Government shall contain a stipulation that eight hours shall constitute a day's work and provides appropriate penalties for requiring or permitting work upon such contracts in excess of eight hours, except where the President has declared an emergency to exist. It applies to women as well as to men. I am advised by the War and Navy Departments that their contracts include the stipulation referred to. I have been unable to find legislation that empowers executive officers to stipulate the number of hours that shall constitute a day's work on any other contracts. The declaration by the President that an emergency exists, necessitating the waiving of the eight-hour work-day, does not change the requirement of the law that the stipulation of an eight-hour day shall be included in the contract. It simply relieves the contractor of that part of his obligation during the period of the emergency. The Naval Appropriation Bill of March 4, 1917, contains a clause which, while it reiterates the President's authority to suspend provisions of the law prohibiting more than eight hours labor in any one day, imposes upon the contractor the payment of time and one-half for all hours work in excess of eight hours per day.
The eight-hour provision does not apply to supplies or to articles which can usually be bought in the open market. Women work to a considerable extent in the making of garments for the Army and Navy, which are construed to be things that can usually be bought in the open market, and consequently do not come within the provisions of the eight-hour law. I take it that this is the basis of the protest contained in the resolution. There is nothing in existing law that enables the Department letting the contract to stipulate that adult labor shall be employed or the wages that shall be paid by the contractor.
The Council of National Defense is trying to work out a system of labor adjustment applicable to contractors and their employees with a view to the satisfactory settlement of the various subjects enumerated in the report and such other questions as may arise from time to time. I am advised by the Solicitor of this Department that there would appear to be no legal objection to stipulating in the contracts in question a provision that disputes arising between the contractor and his employees, which might affect the work on the contract, shall be submitted to a board of arbitration for adjustment. This proposition is not substantially different from conditions which are frequently inserted in contracts that the contractor shall at all times keep in his employ competent workmen; that he shall maintain a plant or facilities adequate to the proper execution of the contract; and that an employee may be dismissed upon request of a designated officer. Nor does it differ in essence from a stipulation creating a board of survey or any other designated umpire whose finding as to disputes arising in connection with the contract shall be final.