In Huck Finn's Town

Twenty States had ratified the Child Labor Amendment to the Federal Constitution up to last week when the Texas Legislature for the third time within a year turned thumbs down on it. As in the 20 other States which had rejected this proposal, Texas law-makers argued long and loud that the Amendment would deprive farmers and small businessmen of the services of their children under 18 years of age.

Day before the Texas vote, NRA revoked its first Blue Eagle in a case involving child labor. Victim was neither a shrimp cannery operator nor a sugar beet harvester, both notorious pre-NRA child-sweaters, but one Moss P. Lugena, 53, proprietor of the Lugena Family Laundry,

No. 1316 Lindell Ave., Hannibal, Mo. Mr. Lugena's family laundry was just that. He. his wife, three daughters, a son-in-law and a sister-in-law ran the business, lived upstairs over the plant. Two months ago, NRA compliance officers found Moss Jr., 15, driving his father's laundry truck, in violation of the blanket laundry code which prohibits youths between 14 and 16 from working more than three hours a day.

Father Lugena protested that his 15-year-old had just been showing a new driver the laundry route for "a few hours a day," that Moss Jr. had been permitted to absent himself from high school for this purpose.

There was no evidence that Father Lugena had mistreated his boy. But it was only natural that he should feel some sympathy with another, more famed Hannibal parent, "Pap" Finn, to whom it seemed downright unreasonable that Huckleberry should be sent to school, sleep in a bed and nightshirt like a "sweet-scented dandy" instead of cooking for "Pap" and running his errands. Nevertheless, ruled the National Compliance Board: "Child labor will not be tolerated regardless of relationship."

Meantime, President Roosevelt once more personally injected himself into the fight to make law out of the Child Labor Amendment, now pending before seven Legislatures. "Of course I am in favor of the Child Labor Amendment," he wrote

Mrs. Dorothy LaRue Brown of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters. "A step in the right direction was achieved by demonstrating the simplicity of its application under the NRA. Those connected with industries which had been the worst violators were the first to see the wisdom of that step. It is my opinion that the matter hardly requires further academic discussion. The right path has been definitely shown."

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