Court Opinion

ID: 9651124
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:08:12.454971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:30.403054
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The only question which, as I view it, requires discussion is the meaning of § 8 (f); for the plaintiffs’ objections, based upon the Fifth Amendment, and — as applied to this situation — upon a supposed unlawful delegation of power, have long since been answered in the books. I should have not had any trouble as to § 8(f), had it applied to all wages — those fixed by statute as well as those fixed by “advisory committees” — indeed, I am not sure that the Administrator would have needed any express grant of power to promulgate the regulation which he did, had the Act been silent. His duty might have, included preventing evasions and safe-guarding the rates in any event. But, since the power is in terms limited to what I may call “committee,” as opposed to “statutory,” wages, I have had some doubts whether we should construe it to comprise so drastic an exercise as is here in question. Indeed, unless it can be read to cover “statutory” wages, I do not believe that it would justify the proscription of a substantial part of the entire industry; for in that event the purpose we should have to ascribe to Congress would be nothing short of absurd. The regulation was promulgated in August, 1943, and at most could cover less than two years, except for the possibility — remote in this industry — that an “advisory committee” might thereafter reduce wages below 40 cents under § 8(e). And yet the regulation will disorganize and make over the industry, break up much family economy, and produce conditions which cannot possibly adjust themselves until after it has itself ceased to exist, when by hypothesis all will be free to go back to homework. Not only does every consideration which can support so heroic a remedy apply equally to “statutory” wages, but their exclusion so mutilates the only purpose that could have actuated the regulation, as to leave no intelligible purpose at all.
Even so, I should have had the utmost *624compunction in disregarding the explicit language with which the section begins, were it not for its legislative history. The grant of power appeared in the Senate bill in its present form, where it was part of an entirely different plan: a Board was to fix all labor standards. There were amendments in the Senate which I shall come back to in a moment; but, when the bill reached the House, the whole scheme was scrapped, and wages were fixed by statute. I do not understand that in that phase, any power was given to the Administrator to protect the rates against evasion or to safeguard them; reliance being, perhaps, on his implied powers. In Conference a compromise was arranged, and a hybrid resulted; statutory rates were kept, but the Administrator had no power over them except a veto, and “advisory committees” were to fix them within prescribed limits. It was into this new plan, and into § 8, which set it up, that the power, as originally granted to the Administrator in the Senate, was 'reintroduced. Having had its origin in a plan which allowed wages to be fixed ad hoc, it took its place in that part of the act which still allowed them to be so fixed,’ though within limits. It was entirely natural that, when so introduced, the power should be thought of as limited to “committee” wages, forgetting its capricious and egregious incidence, if that were done. It does not therefore seem to me an undue liberty to give the section as a whole the meaning it must have had, in spite of the clause with which it begins. Such treatment of a statute needs no apology today, whatever were the scruples - of the past. There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally; in every interpretation we must pass between Scylla and Charybdis; and I certainly do not wish to add to the barrels of ink that have been spent in logging the route. As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.
I have not mentioned the parenthesis, which was interpolated into what has now become § 8(f) while it was in the Senate, and which was deleted when it was restored. This grew up through step by step additions, among which “homework” was one. I think that we should misread it— built up in this way as it was — if we supposed that the process indicated more than a desire to make sure that the specified details should be included. Indeed, even though the whole parenthesis had been struck out while the original plan remained, I should have put it down to the belief that it was unwise to specify so much, lest the specification be taken as exhaustive. But that did not happen; the section, which had apparently died with the Senate plan, was lifted out of that setting, and was put into the compromise bill as it had stood originally. It would be indeed a far cry to infer from that that all the items which by accretion had made their way into the parenthesis were in this way excised from the Administrator’s powers. Indeed, if so —as he argues — he could not even regulate labels, for, although § 11(c) gives him power over records, it does not give him power over these.
Finally, I cannot see that the Puerto Rico and Virgin Island amendment to § 6 stands in the way. When the Act was first passed it was not in it; it remained for two years just as it was. It would be unsafe to interpret the original meaning by an amendment made two years later; certainly, when it was a specific and detailed provision, applicable to islands where the conditions were quite different from those in the continental United States.