Acting on the recommendation of a British government committee investigating the high incidence in white lead factories of illness among employees, most of whom were women, the Home Secretary proposed in 1895 that Parliament enact legislation that would prohibit women from holding most jobs in white lead factories. Although the Women's Industrial Defence Committee (WIDC), formed in 1892 in response to earlier legislative attempts to restrict women's labor, did not discount the white lead trade's potential health dangers, it opposed the proposal, viewing it as yet another instance f limiting women's work opportunities. Also opposing the proposal was the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW), which attempted to challenge it by investigating the causes of illness in white lead factories. SPEW contended, and WIDC concurred, that controllable conditions in such factories were responsible for the development of lead poisoning. SPEW provided convincing evidence that lead poisoning could be avoided if workers were careful and clean and if already extant workplace safety regulations were stringently enforced. However, the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), which had ceased in the late 1880's to oppose restrictions on women's labor, supported the eventually enacted proposal, in part because safety regulations were generally not being enforced in white lead factories, where there were no unions (and little prospect of any) to pressure employers to comply with safety regulations.

    In its 1903 decision in the case of Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, the United States Supreme Court rejected the efforts of three Native American tribes to prevent the opening of tribal lands to non-Indian settlement without tribal consent. In his study of the Lone Wolf case, Blue Clark properly emphasizes the Court's assertion of a virtually unlimited unilateral power of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate) over Native American affairs. But he fails to note the decision's more far-reaching impact: shortly after Lone Wolf, the federal government totally abandoned negotiation and execution of formal written agreements with Indian tribes as a prerequisite for the implementation of federal Indian policy. Many commentators believe that this change had already occurred in 1871 when— following a dispute between the House and the Senate over which chamber should enjoy primacy in Indian affairs—Congress abolished the making of treaties with Native American tribes. But in reality the federal government continued to negotiate formal tribal agreements past the turn of the century, treating these documents not as treaties with sovereign nations requiring ratification by the Senate but simply as legislation to be passed by both houses of Congress. The Lone Wolf decision ended this era of formal negotiation and finally did away with what had increasingly become the empty formality of obtaining tribal consent.