Fort Smith & Western Railroad v. Mills

delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a bill of equity brought by the Fort Smith and Western Railroad Company and the trustee of a mortgage given to secure bonds of that road, to enjoin the receiver of the road from conforming to the Act of September 3, 5, 1916, c. 436, 39 Stat. 721 , in respect of hours of service and wages, and to enjoin the District Attorney of the United States from proceeding to enforce the act. The bill alleges

The act in question, known as the Adamson Law, , was passed to meet the emergency created by the threat of a general railroad strike. It fixed eight hours as a day’s work and provided that for some months, pending an investigation, the compensation of employees of railroads subject to the Act to Regulate Commerce should not be "reduced below the present standard day’s wage,” and that time in excess of eight hours should be paid for pro rata at the same rate. The time has expired long since but the rights of the parties require a decision of the case.

In Wilson v. New, 243 U. S. 332 , it was decided that the act was within the constitutional power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States; that since, by virtue, of the organic interdependence of different parts of the Union, not only comfort but life would be endangered on a large scale if interstate railroad traffic suddenly stopped, Congress could meet the danger of such á stoppage by legislation, and that, in view of the public interest, the mere fact that it required an expenditure to tide the country over the trouble would not of itself alone show a taking of property without due process of law. It was

But the bill in Wilson v. New raised only the general objections to the act that were common to every railroad. In ‘that case it was not necessary to consider to what extremes the law might be carried or what were its constitutional limits. It was not decided, for instance, that Congress could or did require a "railroad to continue in business at a loss. See Brooks-Scanlan Co. v. Railroad Commission of Louisiana, 251 U. S. 396 , It was not decided that there might not be circumstances to which the act could not be applied consistently with the Fifth Amendment, or that the act in spite of its universal language must be construed to reach literally every carrier by railroad subject to the Act to Regulate Commerce. It is true that the first section of the statute purports to apply to any such carrier, and the third to the compensation of railway employees subject to this act. But the statute avowedly was enacted in haste to meet an- emergency, and the general language necessary to satisfy the demands of the men need not be taken to go further than the emergency required or to have been intended to make trouble rather than to allay it. We cannot suppose that it was meant to forbid work being done at a less price than the rates laid down, when both parties to the bargain wished to go on as before and when the circumstances of the road were so exceptional that the lower compensation accepted would not affect the market for labor upon other roads.

But that is the present case. An insolvent-road had succeeded in making satisfactory. terms with its men,

Decree reversed.

Mr. Justice Day, Mr. Justice Van Devanter, Mr. Justice Pitney and Mr. Justice McReynolds agree with this decision limiting the effect of the Adamson Law as stated, but adhere to the views concerning the constitutionality of the act expressed by them in Wilson v. New.