804
Opinion of the Court
Hamilton F. Kean and Representative Mary T. Norton, wrote to the Department of Labor expressing concern that federal contractors were not hiring members of New Jersey's union locals even though the Island work site was part of New Jersey. N. J. Exhs. 12, 24-27. The Department of Labor asked the Procurement Division of the Public Works Branch of the Treasury Department for advice on this issue, and the Procurement Division originally decided that "[s]ince Ellis Island is not clearly within the boundary lines of either state and is clearly outside of the jurisdiction of either, workers should be drawn in roughly equal proportions from the two states." N. J. Exhs. 24, 33-35. When the Jersey City, New Jersey, chapter of Bricklayers, Masons, and Plasterers International Union would not settle for this neutrality and pressed the Treasury Department for a statement that Ellis Island was in New Jersey, the Department managed to lob the question back to the Department of Labor, whose solicitor (later Judge) Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., sent this response: "[I]t seems to me perfectly apparent that your answer is sound: Ellis Island and Bedloe's Island are no more a part of New York or New Jersey than the Philippine Islands or Hawaii are. They are territories of the United States not falling under the jurisdiction of any one of the forty-eight states." N. J. Exh. 43. And yet matters did not rest there for long, for when a Government contractor, the Driscoll Company, later learned that it would have to employ both New York and New Jersey workers, it wrote to the Treasury Department calling attention to the 1834 Compact, of which the agency apparently had been unaware. With skillful evasiveness, the Treasury replied that under the Compact, "[t]he question appears to be one of fact: whether Ellis Island is within the territorial limits of New York or New Jersey. This does not seem to be a matter for determination by the Board of Labor Review." N. J. Exh. 51. When the contractor continued to protest any requirement to hire workers from New Jersey, the Procurement Division
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