THE WORK OF 
THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR 
ORGANIZATION 
INTRODUCTION 
OR more than a century the subject of international 
Fo standards has commanded the interest of reform 
leaders, economists and statesmen. In its early stages 
the movement for improving the employment conditions of 
industrial workers by concerted action of responsible govern- 
ments was based entirely on humanitarian motives. The 
condition of wage earners who were thrown out of work by 
the introduction of machinery in the early decades of the 
nineteenth century attracted the attention of social reformers, 
who attempted to impress the governments of industrially 
and politically prominent countries with the importance of 
correcting this situation by adopting legislation fixing uni- 
form legal conditions of industrial employment in these 
countries. 
As early as 1818, Robert Owen, the Scottish manufacturer 
and reformer, presented two memorials to the Congress of 
the Holy Alliance, urging the adoption by international 
agreement of uniform labor legislation to protect the health, 
comfort and welfare of the working classes. Subsequently, 
similar proposals were made by other reform leaders and 
economists, but no official step was taken until 1855, when 
the Swiss Government suggested the advisability of making 
an international concordat which would regulate the length 
of the work day, employment of women and children, pro- 
tection of workers against occupational diseases, and similar 
matters. No action, however, took place as a result of this 
suggestion. 
In the course of the nineteenth century, the demand for 
international agreement on standards of industrial employ- 
ment came from various workingmen’s associations and 
labor conferences, such as The First Internationale, The 
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