Frank Murphy

“ Whether or not respondents, in drilling to a specified depth short of oil, may be regarded as engaged in producing or mining, and we certainly are not to be understood as intimating that they may not, recognition of the obvious requiries us to hold that at the very least they were engaged in a 'process or occupation necessary to the production' of oil. Oil is obtained only by piercing the earth's surface; drilling a well is a necessary part of the productive process to which it is intimately related. ”

“ I think Congress could not and did not intend to exert its granted power over interstate commerce upon what in practice and common understanding is purely local activity, on the pretext that everything everybody does is a contributing cause to the existence of commerce between the states, and in that sense necessary to its existence. ”

“ For reasons peculiar to the oil industry, a cable drilling crew then undertakes with cable tools to 'bring in' the well or else demonstrate that it is a dry hole. Respondents were employed by petitioner as members of its rotary drilling crew and worked on approximately thirty-two wells in the Panhandle Oil Field of Texas; thirty-one of those wells produced oil, and the other one produced gas. ”