For the Amish, tradition and the Law Collide: wary of idle hands, the Amish are seeking an exemption from child labor laws for their teenage boys.

• Author: Greenhouse, Steven
• Position: National

Over the din of a buzzing band saw, the Amish furniture maker complained that Uncle Sam was out to get owners of woodworking shops like his simply for trying to teach Amish youths a trade.

The Amish just want to be let alone, he says, but the federal government is meddling in their lives and livelihoods by fining Amish sawmills and woodworking shops that employ teenagers, in violation of child labor law.

"What are we supposed to do with them if they don't work here, have them stay on the street all day?" says the furniture maker, who insisted on anonymity. At other people's homes, he says, "I see kids watching TV. Shouldn't they be occupied doing something worthwhile?"

Federal law has long barred children under 18 from working in sawmills and woodworking factories because they are so dangerous. The Amish have upset opponents of child labor by pushing Congress for an exemption based largely on religious grounds.

More than 150,000 Amish live in rural communities in 25 states, predominantly Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. They are members of a religious community that broke away from the Mennonites, another Protestant group, in Europe in the 1690s. To escape persecution, many fled to America and settled in Pennsylvania, the colony founded by William Penn, where religious liberty was guaranteed.

The Amish generally require plain clothing and prohibit cars, televisions, computers and movies. Electricity from the power grid is forbidden, though diesel generators may provide power for businesses.

Amish religious rules also require children to leave school after eighth grade to learn a trade. (Pennsylvania law exempts certain groups, including the Amish, from school attendance after the eighth grade.) For generations of young Amish men, that trade was farming: The horse-drawn buggies traveling the back roads of Bird-in-Hand, Paradise and other Amish communities in eastern Pennsylvania at one time passed miles of pasture and plowed fields.

But today the roadsides are punctuated by sawmills and woodworking shops, producing tables, chairs, beds and gazebos. As economic pressures and a scarcity of farmland fuel a shift from farming to small business, the Amish want to train teenage boys in woodworking. (Teenage girls continue to learn skills like quilting or work in retail shops.)

WILL CONGRESS GET INVOLVED?

The Amish have persuaded allies in Congress, including Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, to introduce a bill that would allow...