The Jewish Outlook

Germany.

The High Court for Posen, sitting at Breslau, has, on appeal, delivered a judgment which is of great importance to Jews who close their business places on Saturday. The two heads of the firm Wolff Krimmer at Liegnitz, who do not transact business on the Jewish Sabbath, were summoned there by the inspector of factories for having employed women in their workshops after half-past five on Saturdays during the winter of 1904. The factory act permits work to be done until half-past eight in the evenings except on Saturdays and the eve of Christian holidays, when all work must cease at half-past two in the afternoon. But the act also permits women to work on sixty days of the year beyond the hours just specified and till ten o'clock in the evening, and as there is no restriction as to the days when this extra labor may be performed the firm in question believed that they were within their rights in selecting Saturdays in the winter when the Sabbath terminates sufficiently early to permit of several hours' work. The factory inspector thought otherwise, and, maintaining Saturday was excluded from the proviso, he summoned the firm. The Court of First Instance dismissed the summons, but this decision was reversed by the Criminal Chamber, which fined each of the defendants twenty marks. Their counsel appealed, with the result that the High Court at Breslau has quashed the conviction.