The businesses argued that the coal loaders or the truck drivers providing work were independent contractors, and so not covered by social security taxes.

The same principles were to be applied as under the National Labor Relations Act, as elaborated in NLRB v Hearst Publications.

[2] The Social Security Act of 1935 was the result of long consideration by the President and Congress of the evil of the burdens that rest upon large numbers of our people because of the insecurities of modern life, particularly old age and unemployment.

Employers do not pay taxes on certain groups of employees, such as agricultural or domestic workers, but none of these exceptions is applicable to these cases.

Since Congress has made clear by its many exemptions, such as, for example, the broad categories of agricultural labor and domestic service, 53 Stat.

1384, 1393, that it was not its purpose to make the Act cover the whole field of service to every business enterprise, the sections in question are to be read with the exemptions in mind.

As the federal social security legislation is an attack on recognized evils in our national economy, a constricted interpretation of the phrasing by the courts would not comport with its purpose.

Such an interpretation would only make for a continuance, to a considerable degree, of the difficulties for which the remedy was devised, and would invite adroit schemes by some employers and employees to avoid the immediate burdens at the expense of the benefits sought by the legislation.

The distributor who undertakes to market at his own risk the product of another, or the producer who agrees so to manufacture for another, ordinarily cannot be said to have the employer-employee relationship.

We concluded that, since that end was the elimination of labor disputes and industrial strife, "employees" included workers who were such as a matter of economic reality.

The aim of the Act was to remedy the inequality of bargaining power in controversies over wages, hours, and working conditions.

We rejected the test of the "technical concepts pertinent to an employer's legal responsibility to third persons for the acts of his servants."

Application of the social security legislation should follow the same rule that we applied to the National Labor Relations Act in the Hearst case.

Few businesses are so completely integrated that they can themselves produce the raw material, manufacture, and distribute the finished product to the ultimate consumer without assistance from independent contractors.

Contracts, however "skillfully devised," Lucas v. Earl, 281 U. S. 111, 281 U. S. 115, should not be permitted to shift tax liability as definitely fixed by the statutes.

The Social Security Agency and the courts will find that degrees of control, opportunities for profit or loss, investment in facilities, permanency of relation, and skill required in the claimed independent operation are important for decision.

These unloaders and truckers and their assistants are, from one standpoint, an integral part of the businesses of retailing coal or transporting freight.

Their energy, care, and judgment may conserve their equipment or increase their earnings, but Greyvan and Silk are the directors of their businesses.

[9] Giving full consideration to the concurrence of the two lower courts in a contrary result, we cannot agree that the unloaders in the Silk case were independent contractors.

There are cases, too, where driver owners of trucks or wagons have been held employees[13] in accident suits at tort or under workmen's compensation laws.

But we agree with the decisions below in Silk and Greyvan that, where the arrangements leave the driver owners so much responsibility the investment and management as here, they must be held to be independent contractors.

It is the total situation, including the risk undertaken, the control exercised, the opportunity for profit from sound management, that marks these driver owners as independent contractors.Black J, Douglas J and Murphy J concurred with the principles, but dissented on their application, stating they would have held the Greyvan truckers also to be employees.