Court Opinion

ID: 9810257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:44:28.015208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:31.024450
License: Public Domain

Sea well, J.,
dissenting: In excluding plaintiff from tbe benefit of tbe National Fair Labor Standards Act (Act of 25 June, 1938, c. 676, 52 Stat. 1060), I believe we fail to accord to that measure tbe liberal construction to which all such remedial statutes are entitled. On this, tbe second bearing before us (see 218 N. C., 184, 10 S. E. [2d], 644), we now know that plaintiff did not put water into tbe boilers during bis nightly vigil, nor did be put bis band upon the manufactured product or tbe tools by which it was created. He simply stood by and watched against fire and flood, thief and tbe saboteur. It is my thought that in bis case tbe ends of justice may be met and tbe humanity intended by tbe statute may be served by a judicial recognition of tbe principle, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
In construing statutes which deal with current social and economic problems we must recognize that tbe words employed in them bave often moved from tbe dictionary meaning into a more advanced significance in tbe literature of tbe subject. Towne v. Eisner, 245 U. S., 418, 38 S. Ct., 158, 62 L. Ed., 372; Cole v. Fibre Co., 200 N. C., 484, 157 S. E., 857. In economic and statistical discussions production is referred to in terms of total output, and I think it is used in this sense when we speak of its flow in interstate commerce. I think it is fully consistent with tbe definition which tbe statute provides that a laborer, a watchman, so necessary to tbe conservation of tbe product and to tbe protection of tbe tools and machines by which manufacture is made possible, and who thereby is engaged in an occupation which results in a larger or undiminished output, put into tbe flow of interstate commerce and made *184available for mankind, should be considered within the statute.
I think we might also consider the probability that controlling Federal judicial opinion will so regard it, as Federal administration has already done.
I think the court committed error in refusing to give the instruction asked for, and that the plaintiff is entitled to a new trial.