Although in a few early cases the Supreme Court enforced statutes which
gave legal effect to local customs of miners with respect to mining
claims on public lands,[61] and to standards adopted by railroads for
equipment on railroad cars,[62] it held, in Schechter Poultry Corp. _v._
United States,[63] and Carter _v._ Carter Coal Company[64] that private
trade groups could not be empowered to issue binding rules concerning
methods of competition or wages and hours of labor. On the other hand,
statutes providing that restrictions upon the production or marketing of
agricultural commodities shall become operative only upon a favorable
vote by a prescribed majority of the persons affected have been
upheld.[65] The position of the Court is that such a requirement does
not involve any delegation of legislative authority, since Congress has
merely placed a restriction upon its own regulation by withholding its
operation in a given case unless it is approved upon a referendum.[66]


POWER TO GIVE EFFECT TO CONTINGENT LEGISLATION

An entirely different problem arises when, instead of directing another
department of government to apply a general statute to individual cases,
or to supplement it by detailed regulation, Congress commands that a
previously enacted statute be revived, suspended or modified, or that a
new rule be put into operation, upon the finding of certain facts by an
executive or administrative officer. Since the delegated function in
such cases is not that of "filling up the details" of a statute,
authority for it must be sought elsewhere than in Wayman _v._ Southard
and its progeny. It is to be found in an even earlier case--The Brig
Aurora[67]--where the revival of a law upon the issuance of a
Presidential proclamation was upheld in 1813. After previous restraints