ments in the contracts and for certain conditions under which the vessels shall be constructed. The proposed amendment to the paragraph simply adds to the requirements that the bill proposes to impose upon the contracts and upon those who have control of the construction." The point of order having been overruled, Mr. Fitzgerald said (ib. 4441):

"Mr. Chairman, the effect of this amendment, if adopted, will be to require all contracts for the construction of vessels which are authorized in this bill to contain a provision. that the vessels shall be built in accordance with the eight-hour law. I wish to say that I believe the eight-hour law should apply to these contracts. Since I have been a Member of this House, some eleven years, repeated efforts have been made to enact a law making an eighthour day the legal day for all work done for the Government under contract. Such a bill has never come before the House for action. Five or six years ago the Committee on Labor adopted a resolution directing the Department of Commerce and Labor to make an investigation and ascertain what the effect of an eight-hour day had been in certain work in comparison with similar work done in plants operated for nine hours each day. An exhaustive examination was made of conditions in the navy-yard at Brooklyn, N. Y., and in the Newport News Shipbuilding Company's plant.

"The report made by the department showed that in the construction of the Connecticut at the navy-yard at New York the mechanics turned out 24 per cent more work in an eight-hour day than the mechanics at the Newport News shipbuilding yard turned out in nine hours. If the eight-hour law were applied to these contracts not only would the men be benefited, but the navy-yards would then be put upon a fair basis in competition with private plants."

As, under the provision in question, the contract for the construction of the vessels referred to must contain a provision requiring said vessels to be built in accordance with the provision of the act of August 1, 1892, we must necessa

rily look to the interpretation which has been given that act to determine the scope of the present provision.

In an opinion rendered August 24, 1892 (20 Op. 454), Attorney-General Miller held that the act of August 1, 1892, did not apply to a contract for supplying post-office lock boxes, lock drawers, locks, pulls, plates, etc., to be delivered by the contractors at the freight depot at the point of destination and placed in position in the building by the Government. He said (p. 455):.

"From your statement of facts, it does not appear that the persons who furnish the lock boxes, lock drawers, etc., are to do any work upon the public buildings. So far as appears, they simply contract to deliver to the Government, at the freight depot at the various points of destination, the goods in question. In other words, their contract is a contract for the furnishing of materials to be used in public buildings, and not for the service and employment of laborers or mechanics to be employed upon such buildings. To hold that in purchasing materials to be used in the erection and fitting up of public buildings the requirement that such materials shall only have been manufactured by persons working eight hours a day would render this law impossible of execution. If the law is applicable to the goods you name, it is not seen why it would not be equally applicable to a purchase of spikes, nails, lumber, brick, etc., entering into the construction of government buildings."

This opinion of Mr. Miller was expressly approved and affirmed in the opinion of Mr. Hoyt of August 3, 1906, above cited, and again approved by Mr. Hoyt in an opinion rendered by him as Acting Attorney-General on August 4, 1906 (26 Op. 36), in which it was held that the act of August 1, 1892, did not apply to contractors furnishing the Quartermaster's Department with supplies.

A like construction has been placed upon the following statute of the State of New York (Laws of N. Y. 1906, chap. 506, sec. 3, p. 1395), which is similar to that under consideration:

* * * Each contract to which the State or a municipal corporation is a party which may involve the

employment of laborers, workmen or mechanics shall contain a stipulation that no laborer, workman or mechanic in the employ of the contractor, subcontractor or other person doing or contracting to do the whole or a part of the work contemplated by the contract shall be permitted. or required to work more than eight hours in any one calendar day except in cases of extraordinary emergency caused by fire, flood or danger to life or property.

* *

In Bohnen v. Metz (126 N. Y. App. Div. 807) a contract. had been made with the city of New York for the erection of a municipal building, the contractor agreeing that he would comply with the provisions of the above statute. In the course of construction, doors, windows, and other woodwork required for the building were manufactured for the purpose at the request of the contractor by a manufacturer in the city, who employed his workmen and mechanics for more than eight hours a day and paid them less than the prevailing rate of wages, which was also inhibited by the statute. In holding that the contractor had not violated the law, the court said (p. 810):

"Assuming that the present law is free from the vices of the former law pointed out in People ex rel. Cossey v. Grout (179 N. Y. 417), and People v. Orange County Road Const. Co. (175 id. 84) and kindred cases, it can not be held that the legislature intended to include labor employed in the production of raw material necessary for municipal buildings and works. Presumptively, the legislature enacts labor laws to benefit and aid labor. If the law be held to embrace purchased manufactured material and to work a forfeiture of the contract and all payments earned if in its manufacture and preparation for use the eight-hour law is not observed and the prevailing rate of wages of the locality is not paid, its presumed beneficent object will be defeated, for no municipal work will be done because no contractor will be foolhardy enough to enter into any contract liable to be annulled in such a manner. Labor laws, like any other law which the legislature sees fit to enact, should be upheld by the courts where no constitutional violation exists, but no absurd interpretation which defeats their object should be permitted.

"The situation is not changed because the defendant Wille contracted that he would forfeit payments if he violated the law. The material which he purchased did not come within the law as we view it, because the persons employed in the manufacture of the doors, windows and woodwork ultimately used in the building were not employed 'on, about, or upon such public work' within the meaning of the statute, and hence it was unimportant whether they were employed more than eight hours a day or were not paid the prevailing rate of wages."

In Ellis v. United States (206 U. S. 246) the Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of the act of August 1, 1892, but held that persons employed on bridges and scows, in dredging a channel in a harbor, "were not laborers or mechanics and were not employed upon any of the public works of the United States within the meaning of the act" (p. 260). In that case the court said (p. 258):

*

"Both of the phrases to be construed admit a broad enough interpretation to cover these cases, but the question is whether that interpretation is reasonable, and, in a penal statute, fair. Certainly they may be read in a narrower sense with at least equal ease. The statute says, 'laborers and mechanics * * * employed * * upon any of the public works.' It does not say, and no one supposes it to mean, 'any public work.' The words 'upon' and 'any of the' and the plural 'works' import that the objects of labor referred to have some kind of permanent existence and structural unity, and are severally capable of being regarded as complete wholes."

In the light of these authorities, I think it clear that the provision in the naval appropriation act must be construed to apply simply to work done upon the vessel itself at the place where it is built, and not as applying to the manufacture of machinery or other material elsewhere which is to enter into the construction of the vessel. This would limit the provision to work upon the vessel at the shipyard, as seems to have been contemplated by Representative Fitzgerald. So construed, the provision would not apply to "the construction of the machinery of said vessel as an

entity," as provided in the proposed clause drafted by your department, assuming that such machinery would be constructed separate and apart from the vessel, but it would apply to the installation of such machinery in the vessel. The restrictions of the eight-hour law could no more be held to apply to the construction of the machinery as an entity, separate and apart from the vessel, than to the construction of any other thing separate and apart therefrom which is subsequently to be incorporated into the vessel-as, for instance, a dynamo or wireless-telegraph plant. Either the law applies to the manufacture of everything that is to form a part of the vessel or it applies only to work done upon the vessel at its situs. The great inconvenience, if not impossibility, of enforcing the law under the former view is manifest. If intended to regulate the hours of service of laborers and mechanics employed in the manufacture of everything which enters into the construction of a vessel, the law would reach out in innumerable directions and interfere with the working of every factory or shop which was furnishing material for the vessel. On the other hand, by construing the law to apply only to work done upon the vessel at its situs, its enforcement becomes a simple matter. While the argument ab inconvenienti is not very persuasive, still it is a rule of statutory construction that mischievous and absurd results should be avoided; and when, as here, we find that the statute to be applied has already received a construction which avoids such results, all doubt on the subject is removed.

I suggest, therefore, that you simply incorporate into the contract the provision required by the statute, and direct the bidder's attention to this opinion for the purpose of advising him as to your understanding of the scope of that provision.

Respectfully,

GEORGE W. WICKERSHAM.

The SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

NOTE.-Informal opinion of July 9, 1910, by Solicitor-General Bowers, at that time Acting Attorney-General, to the Secretary of the Navy, printed on pages 531-534.