Alfred E. Smith, whose explosive attacks on the Roosevelt administration have rendered him suspect of the nation's liberals, now offers an amendment to the proposed child labour law. He would have its age limit revised from eighteen to sixteen, to leave the question of child labor to the states, and limit federal interference to products which move in interstate commerce. In this way, Mr. Smith believes that the law would be more workable, and more acceptable--that it would stand a better chance of ratification and enforcement.

Those liberal magazines which have attacked Mr. Smith's "boloney dollar" pronunciamento will undoubtedly find in this suggestion a good deal of fuel. Since his association with the Empire State Building, it has been supposed that Mr. Smith is forever lost to the cause of liberalism. But the significant point here is not Mr. Smith's lack of liberalism; it is his unfamiliarity with a few large landmarks in American constitutional law. The provisions which he suggests are the conventional child labor provisions, sponsored by agitators since the dawn of the twentieth contury, and effectively caught in the impasse of Hammer V. Dagenhart. The supreme court there decided that the interstate commerce regulation of the federal government could not operate against any product on the basis of its antecedent conditions of manufacture. So far as the court is concerned, neither the interstate commerce clause nor the taxing power can act as wedges for the prohibition of child labor.

But the court has never ruled that the federal government is powerless to prohibit child labor directly, as the present child labor law would prohibit it. Mr. Smith's parallel with the sumptuary Eighteenth amendment is an unfortunate one. The fact is that the eighteenth amendment was passed, and only a national revolt at its philosophy forced its repeal. The eighteenth amendment could not have been passed if its exponents had placed their hopes on the taxing power, or the interstate commerce clause. Behind the present child labor law a very simple strategy is visible; the example of the eighteenth amendment indicated that a prohibition legally impossible when disguised was legally possible when it was made explicit. The practical difference between the prohibition of liquor and the prohibition of child labor is also clear. The first is a sumptuary law, with evanescent popular support, the second is an obvious social reform, which commands and should continue to command the allegiance of the American community.

If there has ever been an opportunity for law that is "a kind of social engineering," the present child labor movement presents it to the Roosevelt administration. The breakdown of state and local government in the United States is only the last of a long series of reasons for the relegation of child labor reform to Washington. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to appreciate the force of Mr. Smith's objections, and it is difficult to see how his poor substitute for the proposed law can claim the advantages of smooth passage and enforceability, since the card he suggests has already been played, and returned, neatly marked, to the deck.

Those who have objected to the law on the grounds that it would encourage the national bureaucracy at the expense of the federal structure always stop their argument at that point. They do not go on to admit that, if the law is passed at all, the national bureaucracy could enforce it, and the state bureaucracies might not. They also do not answer the question as to whether the law should be passed. And yet all of them would resent the charge of legalism. POLLUX.