Evening star., 1941-02-03
Congress to regulate interstate
commerce"

congress 10 regulate interstate
commerce"
Congress having by the present
act adopted the policy of excluding
from interstate commerce all goods
produced by the commerce which do
not conform to the specified labor
standards, it may choose the means
reasonably adopted to the attain
ment of the permitted end even
though they involve control of in
trastate activities" the court said.
The Wage-Hour Act has as its
ultimate objective a Accent hour
and a 40-hour week. The week
maximum has at present been
reached, but the wage minimum will
not be reached until l945. Under
ordinary circumstances now, it is 80
cents an hour.
The cotton mills in attacking the
procedure under which the textile
wage rate was fixed challenged that
provision of the law which permits
the establishment of committees to
set wages in designated areas. de-
claring it was an undue delegation
of power. To this the court said
that the present statute is no less
an exercise of the legislative func-
ton than was the Tariff Act of 1922
authorizing the President to raise
or lower tariff duties so as to equal
ize the difference which with the
aid of the Tariff Commission he
finds between the cost of produc-
ton OF dutiable articles in this and
in foreign countries. his determlna-
ton to be based upon a variety of
relevant factors, some specified and
others not, for which the statute
prescribed no relative way"
The mills also challenged the
wage-hour administrator findings,
which were based on the commit
tees study on the grounds that
wage differential should have been
granted to the South because of the
difference between conditions exist
ing there and in other textile CEN
ters. Other findings also were at
tackled.
I'VE conclude that the admin
istrator'S findings are supported by
substantial evidence" the court said.
Any different conclusion would re-
quire us to substitute our judgment
of the weight of the evidence and
the inference to be drawn from it
for that of the administrator, which
the statute forbids."
Dissent in st. Louis Case.
A vigorous dissent by Justice Rob-
erts was joined by Chief Justice
Hughes in the st. Louis case. JUS
tice Murphy, who was Attorney
General when the case was insti-
tllted, did not participate. No ref
erence was made to participation in
the case by Justice McReynolds,
who retired Saturday.
80 long as a union acts in its
self-interest and does not combine
with non-labor groups the licit and
the illicit under section 20 (of the
Clayton Act) are not to be diStin-
guished by any judgment regarding
the wisdom Or unWiSdom, the
rightness or wrongneSs, the seflsh
ness or unselfishneSs or the end
of which the particular union
activities are the means" said JUS
tice Frankfurter.
by resurrecting the rejected con-
Struction of the Clayton Act and
extending a policy strictly limited
by the Congress itself in the Norris
La Guardia Act seems to me
usurpation by the courts of the
functions of the Congress not only
novel but fraught as well with the
most serious dangers to our con-
stitutional system of division of
powers" said Justice Roberts
dissent.
In an opinion concurring with the
court majority, Justice Stone said
that upon principles hitherto rec
ognized and established by the de-
cisions of this court, the indictment
charges are no violation of the
Sherman Act.
Indicted with Mr.. Hutcheson were