4 or 5 Systems

Financial press agents fought doughtily all week, as they did less conspicuously for three preceding weeks, over a national railway problem, essentially political, secondarily financial. The problem is whether there are to be four or five dominant trunk-lines westward from New York. The fifth, if at all, would be organized and run by Leonor Fresnel Loree, who now controls the Delaware & Hudson. Mr. Loree, grizzly-bear of railroads, Harriman's successor in talent, conferred for nearly three hours. His conferees represented four trunk-line adversaries: the Pennsylvania, the New York Central, the Baltimore & Ohio and the Van Sweringen merger group (once planned to be based on the Nickel Plate, now planned to be based on the Chesapeake & Ohio).

Shrewd, the anti-Loree interests got the following statements into the newspapers:

1) That Mr. Loree would abandon his fifth trunk system plan. (TIME, April 27, 1925 et seq.)

2) That Mr. Loree would within seven or ten days accept a post as chairman of the board of directors for the Van Swer-ingen's system.

3) That Mr. Loree, ill, had been advised by physicians not to attend merger debates.

4) That Mr. Loree was marking time in his Eastern merger negotiations because of his troubles with the Interstate Commerce Commission over his Kansas City Southern-Missouri, Kansas & Texas-Cotton Belt merger in the Southwest.

All these points were, with varying emphasis, denied by Loree soldiers.

If Mr. Loree's opponents succeed in crowding him out of the Eastern trunk-line field the following mergers will in all probability become effective as long planned:

1) The Wabash Railroad will go bodily into the Baltimore & Ohio System.

2) The Lehigh Valley will be divided half-&-half between the Pennsylvania and the Van Sweringen group.

3) The Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh will be divided between the Baltimore & Ohio and the New York Central.

4) The Delaware & Hudson will remain an independent or "bridge" line.

5) The Norfolk & Western will go to the Pennsylvania. 6) The Virginian will be split between the Norfolk & Western and the Van Sweringen group.

7) The Lackawanna will go to the New York Central.

8) The Pennsylvania will be given a Chicago-St. Louis short line by Interstate Commerce Commission consent.

If Mr. Loree's adversaries fail, there may come into being a fifth Eastern trunk-line system. Last week Loree stood silent. His faithful lieutenants howled "press agent" at adverse propaganda, as usual. Three years the battle has raged. Significantly, April First is fixed by both sides as solution date.