The question we have for decision here is whether petitioner, a clerical employee of respondent railroad, is within the coverage of the Federal Employers' Liability Act, § 1, 35 Stat. 65, as amended, 53 Stat. 1404, 45 U.S.C. § 51, 45 U.S.C.A. § 51. Petitioner is employed entirely in respondent's office building in Philadelphia. Her duties consist of filing original tracings of all of respondent's engines, cars, parts, tracks, bridges, and other structures, from which blueprints of those items are made. There are some 325,000 tracings on file in the office in which petitioner works. Whenever an order for blueprints comes in from anywhere in respondent's system, it is petitioner's responsibility to fill the order by securing the correct tracings from the files. These she takes to the blueprint maker in the same office building. After the blueprints are made, it is petitioner's further duty to return the original tracings to the appropriate file. About 67% of the blueprints so made are sent to points outside Pennsylvania. The files which petitioner attends are the sole depository of the original tracings of the structural details of all of respondent's rolling stock, trackage, and other equipment and installations, and as such represent a fund of documents without which maintenance of the operating system would be impossible.
Petitioner was injured when a cracked window pane in her office blew in upon her. She brought suit for personal injury under the Federal Employers' Liability Act. On respondent's motion to dismiss, the District Court held that petitioner was not within the coverage of § 1 of the Act and, there being no diversity of citizenship between the parties, dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 3 Cir., 227 F.2d 810. We granted certiorari because of the importance of the question presented in the administration of the Act. 350 U.S. 965, 76 S.Ct. 439.
As originally enacted, § 1 provided that every railroad, 'while engaging' in interstate commerce,
'shall be liable in damages to any person suffering injury while he is employed by such carrier in such commerce * * * for such injury or death resulting in whole or in part from the negligence of any of the officers, agents, or employees of such carrier, or by reason of any defect or insufficiency, due to its negligence, in its cars, engines, appliances, machinery, track, roadbed, works, boats, wharves, or other equipment.' 35 Stat. 65.
A further paragraph was added to the section in 1939, and it is clear that two specific problems which the amendment sought at least to remedy were the results of this Court's holdings that, at the moment of his injury, the employee as well as the railroad had to be engaged in interstate commerce in order to come within the coverage of § 1, and that employees engaged in construction of new facilities were not covered. S.Rep.No. 661, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. 2-3; Southern Pacific Co. v. Gileo, 351 U.S. 493, 76 S.Ct. 952. The amendment took the form of an expanded definition of 'person * * * employed' in interstate commerce. The amendment reads:
'Any employee of a carrier, any part of whose duties as such employee shall be the furtherance of interstate or foreign commerce; or shall, in any way directly or closely and substantially, affect such commerce as above set forth shall, for the purposes of this Act, be considered as being employed by such carrier in such commerce and shall be considered as entitled to the benefits of this Act * * *.' 53 Stat. 1404.