The Topeka Daily Capital Wednesday July 14, 1920 Chicken Pluckers Must Be Over 14 Years Old, Labor Commissioner Says. Boys under 14 years of age cannot pluck chickens in packing plants in Kansas without laying the proprietor open to paying the federal government ten per cent of his net income for the year, according to a ruling just received by John H. CRAWFORD, state labor commissioner, from the office of the federal commissioner of internal revenue. Employing a boy under 16 years without a permit subjects the owner to the same fine. This under the provisions of federal child labor act. The opinion says, in part: "You are advised that it has been held that the operation of an establishment engaged in the commercial feeing and dressing of poultry does not differ essentially in its legal aspects from a manufacturing establishment, and the producer who prepares and kills fowls and turkeys putting them in condition for market, stands much in the same relation to manufacturing as the maker of leather, for instance. Further, any room or place in which any article or part thereof is altered, cleaned, repaired, or adapted for sale is a workshop within the meaning of the law, and under this definition the operation of plant engaged in killing, dressing and packing poultry would come within the provisions of the act."