Stewart traces the implementation of these laws in factories with an examination of the work of the predominantly bourgeois inspectors and their relations with employers and workers. She shows how employers and workers alike at first evaded, then slowly adjusted to the restrictive legislation. By identifying the curious mixture of reformers involved - including union organizers and enlightened employers, socialists and Social Catholics - and investigating the motives behind their campaign for protective labour legislation in France, Stewart reveals that these laws were conceived as barriers to exclude women from male job monopolies.