Cite as: 532 U. S. 105 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
concern that the legislation might authorize federal judicial enforcement of arbitration clauses in employment contracts and collective-bargaining agreements.6 In response to those objections, the chairman of the ABA committee that drafted the legislation emphasized at a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing that "[i]t is not intended that this shall be an act referring to labor disputes, at all," but he also observed that "if your honorable committee should feel that there is any danger of that, they should add to the bill the following language, 'but nothing herein contained shall apply to seamen or any class of workers in interstate and foreign commerce.' " Hearing 9. Similarly, another supporter of the bill, then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, suggested that "[i]f objection appears to the inclusion of workers' contracts in the law's scheme, it might be well amended by stating 'but nothing herein contained shall apply to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce.' " Id., at 14. The legislation was reintroduced in the next session of Congress with Secretary Hoover's exclusionary language added to § 1,7 and the amendment eliminated organized labor's opposition to the proposed law.8
contracts be signed? Esau agreed, because he was hungry. It was the desire to live that caused slavery to begin and continue. With the growing hunger in modern society, there will be but few that will be able to resist. The personal hunger of the seaman, and the hunger of the wife and children of the railroad man will surely tempt them to sign, and so with sundry other workers in 'Interstate and Foreign Commerce.'" Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual Convention of the International Seamen's Union of America 203-204 (1923) (emphasis added).
6 See Hearing 9. See also Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U. S. 448, 466-467, n. 2 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).
7 See Joint Hearings 2.
8 Indeed, in a postenactment comment on the amendment, the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor reported:
"Protests from the American Federation of Labor and the International Seamen's Union brought an amendment which provided that 'nothing
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