Flat Findings

Ever in the rip tide of pressure groups, Washington during the past month was the scene of a unique Battle of the Pressagents. Sitting in judgment was an emergency Fact-Finding Board of three appointed by Franklin Roosevelt to decide whether railroad managements were justified in imposing a general 15% wage cut (TIME, April 25, et seq.).

Daily in the dingy caucus room of the old House Office Building railroad presidents laid bare the shambles of railroad economics, railroad labor representatives snarled that labor was not to blame, should not pay the penalty. Meanwhile, the rival groups issued reams of charts, figures and opinions. Apex of the managements' campaign was a nationwide splash of advertising. Apex for labor was a 482-page, clothbound book (each copy stamped with the recipient's name in gold letters) dedicated to Franklin Roosevelt and titled Main Street--Not Wall Street. Last week "Main Street" won.

After a 48-hour extension of the Fact-Finding Board's 30-day deliberation, reporters were called to the White House. There the board's chairman, Chief Justice Walter Parker Stacy of North Carolina, who has all the mannerisms of a country judge including scratching his head with his gavel (see cut), wearily announced that the board believed the wage cut unjustified.

Judge Stacy and his co-members, Dean James M. Landis of Harvard Law School and onetime Economics Professor Harry A. Millis, said flatly that: 1) railroad wages are not high; 2) a horizontal wage cut would not meet the emergency since the savings would not go merely to the needy roads; 3) a wage cut would run counter to the present trend of U. S. wages; 4) the railroads' distress since October 1937 is still a short-term situation which the current improvement in business may correct; 5) therefore, the roads should drop the whole idea.

This decision naturally brought whoops from labor, groans from management. Documented by a close-packed, 75-page report, the board's findings were notable for their uncompromising viewpoint and for giving the lie direct to some of management's assertions, particularly that railroad wages were among the highest in the nation. (On the contrary, a report of the National Industrial Conference Board last week put railroad wages below utility wages but well above a composite of 25 manufacturing industries.)

At week's end no one in authority would predict what might happen next. It seemed unlikely management would still insist on the December 1 cut; but if it should, labor would undoubtedly go on the nation-wide strike already voted. By putting it squarely up to the Government to do something for the staggering roads, the Fact-Finders gave impetus to Franklin Roosevelt's request that the two opposing groups get together on a sweeping legislative program.

This week, apparently to push it along, Mr. Roosevelt conferred with the two rival commanders -- Chairman George Harrison of the Railway Labor Executives Association and President John J. Pelley of the Association of American Railroads.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.