Legal Love

Five years ago when Herbert Hoover was President and the U. S. was worried about government deficits, Congress passed an economy bill. Its economies have long since been lost in the shuffle of the New Deal, but one of its provisions, relating not to economy but to spreading work, remains in force: Section 213 decrees that when dismissals from the Government service are made, the first to be fired shall be those who have either a husband or a wife on the payroll. Under it 1,835 employes have been dismissed, 80% of them wives. Loud have been the chants of opposition to this law by enraged feminists and persons who declared it put a penalty on marriage, obliged enamoured Government employes to live in sin.

Last week a repeal bill, proposed by Democrat Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn, reached the floor of the House. In Committee of the Whole, over the protests of women members of both parties, Democrat John J. Cochran of St. Louis succeeded in amending it so as to tighten instead of repeal the antimarriage clause. But final action was taken by the House itself. To the surprise and jubilation of the repeal forces the Cochran amendment was rejected. Straight repeal was voted, 203-to-129, and the bill was sent to the Senate, where its passage was expected. Broad smiles spread on the battle-scarred visages of Edith Nourse Rogers, Mary T. Norton, Caroline O'Day. Faraway looks came into the big, beautiful eyes of Government stenographers as they began to dream again of legal love.

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