Wiley Blount Rutledge

“ Yet not until 1942 did the agency charged with the duty of enforcing the Act deem forwarders of this type to be covered by it. The scope of its legislation is, of course, for Congress to determine and not for the enforcing agency. Inaction, no matter how consistent and long-continued, cannot contract the reach of a statute. But much has properly been said about the important significance which attaches to the meaning given a statute by those whose duty it is to enforce it and who are deemed especially equipped to breathe life into inert language. ”

“ Just as assumption of jurisdiction by an administrative agency for a long period of time goes a long way to prove that powers exercised were impliedly given, see United States v. Midwest Oil Co., 236 U.S. 459, 35 S.Ct. 309, 59 L.Ed. 673, a consistent and unexplained failure to exercise power not obviously conferred by legislation may be equally persuasive that the power claimed was never conferred. ”

“ One turns in vain to the Congressional investigation which led to the Shipping Act, to the hearings on the bills which became that Act, to the reports on which it was based, to the experience under the Act since its inception, as reflected in the reports of the Maritime Commission and its predecessor the Shipping Board, for any indication that the business of independent forwarders, like those in this case, was so conducted as to make their regulation appropriate either to curb practices themselves inimical to the public interest or to render effective the regulation of water carriers. ”