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Stevens, J., dissenting
ment of workers engaged in interstate commerce." Gatliff Coal Co. v. Cox, 142 F. 2d 876, 882 (1944).
The contrary view that the Court endorses today—namely, that only employees engaged in interstate transportation are excluded by § 1—was not expressed until 1954, by the Third Circuit in Tenney Engineering, Inc. v. Electrical Workers, 207 F. 2d 450, 452 (1953). And that decision, significantly, was rejected shortly thereafter by the Fourth Circuit. See Electrical Workers v. Miller Metal Products, Inc., 215 F. 2d 221, 224 (1954). The conflict among the Circuits that persisted in the 1950's thus suggests that it may be inappropriate to attach as much weight to recent Court of Appeals opinions as the Court does in this case. See ante, at 109, 110-111, 112.
Even more important than the 1950's conflict, however, is the way in which this Court tried to resolve the debate. In Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., 353 U. S. 448 (1957), the Court granted certiorari to consider the union's claim that, in a suit brought under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), a federal court may enforce the arbitration clause in a collective-bargaining agreement. The union argued that such authority was implicitly granted by § 301 and explicitly granted by § 2 of the FAA. In support of the latter argument, the union asked the Court to rule either that a collective-bargaining agreement is not a "contrac[t] of employment" within the meaning of the exclusion in § 1, or that the exclusion is limited to transportation workers.11 The Court did not accept either argument, but held that § 301 itself provided the authority to compel arbitration. The fact that the Court relied on § 301 of the LMRA, a statutory provision that does not mention arbitration, rather than the FAA, a statute that expressly authorizes the enforcement of arbitration agreements, strongly implies that the Court had concluded that the FAA simply did
11 See Brief for Petitioner in Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills of Ala., O. T. 1956, No. 211, pp. 53-59.
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