Fragments Swept

Consolidation is the current railroad cry. Like vaudeville jugglers, pitching lamps and crockery deftly aloft, are heads of great U. S. rail systems, throwing and catching the little roads upon whom they have merger designs. At times, however, the juggler's eye tires, his hand wavers.

Furthermore, the railroad juggler usually has the Interstate Commerce Commission shrieking "Drop it! Drop it!" from the front row. So occasionally there is a crash, and bits of dishes and lamp chimneys lie, Humpty-Dumpty like, on the stage floor. Last week the final fragments of one unfortunate juggle went dustbin-bound. The juggler was Leonor F. Loree, able head of Delaware & Hudson. His performance was called The Fifth Trunk Line. The broken pieces were 135,000 shares of Cotton Belt (St. Louis Southwestern R. R.). These shares were sold by the Kansas City Southern to a Manhattan holding company; the sale having been dictated by the I. C. C. With them went the last vestige of the Fifth Trunk Line which Juggler Loree had spent some four years attempting to construct. For union of the Kansas City Southern and the Cotton Belt was essential to the southern portion of the Loree plan. The northern portion has, of course, long since collapsed. So passes from the rail consolidation stage Juggler Loree, shrewd and potent but faced with too heavy odds. Two of his stage "properties" -- the Wabash and the Lehigh Valley roads -- are prominent in the present rail-merger performance. Headliners of this program are the Two Van Sweringens, Oris Paxton and Mantis James. To the Interstate Commerce Commis sion came last week a somewhat peculiar request. Briefly, the petitioner -- Nickel Plate R. R. -- asked permission to acquire stock control of the Wheeling & Lake Erie road. Oddity of the request lay in the fact that last month the I. C. C. ordered the Nickel Plate to dispose of all its holdings in Wheeling & Lake Erie. This order has not been rescinded, but the Van Swer-ingens (Nickel Plate owners) blandly ask for all, having been told that they could have nothing.* No blind optimists, the Van Sweringens possibly were asking for control of the Wheeling as an emphatic method of objecting to the road getting into the hands of the Taplin interests, who are also closely eyeing it.

*The Nickel Plate argument runs somewhat as follows: The I. C. C. order told Nickel Plate, New York Central and Baltimore & Ohio to dispose of their Wheeling stock. The New York Central and the B. & O. anticipated this order by transferring their stock to Allegheny Corp., Van Sweringen holding company. Objection might be taken to joint control of the Wheeling by three roads, but its control by one road is quite another matter.