Cracking the Code

In Stowe, a Vermont village tucked between well-worn ski slopes and hardscrabble homesteads, temperatures of--30DEG do not surprise. Frigidity being the stepmother of invention, David Putnam two years ago became proprietor of Stowe Woolens, Ltd., a manufacturer of sweaters and ski caps.

Putnam supplies yarn to 25 or so knitters, who work at home on machines they buy from manufacturers for $350 and up. Each worker is paid, in venerable cottage-industry fashion, by the piece. The knitters seem to like the arrangement just fine. The U.S. Department of Labor does not. Although never actually sued by the department, Putnam is apparently in violation of Title 29, Chapter V, Part 530, Subsection 2, of the Code of Federal Regulations, which, as any citizen knows, prohibits homework in the knitted outerwear industry.

Putnam protested that the 1941 rule, originally aimed at curbing sweatshop abuses, was mere federal knitpicking. It does not, for instance, ban homework in the unknitted outerwear industry. The department agreed to review the rule, and last week Putnam--along with 32 other witnesses from businesses, trade groups, unions and officials of six states--had his say at a hearing in Washington. "Cottage industry once played an honorable part in America's heritage," he declared afterward. Department officials did not say when, if ever, they might get around to changing the rule. In the meantime, Putnam's workers can stick to their knitting --and wish the Labor Department would stick to its.

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