Change of Umpire

A major and a lieutenant colonel, armed with a mimeograph of the Presidential order directing the Army to seize all U.S. railroads, walked into Union Pacific's towering Omaha headquarters building at 8 o'clock one morning last week. They took an elevator to the 12th-floor executive offices, began knocking at doors. At last they came to the office of tough little Vice President G. F. Ashby. He grinned and guessed:

"You've come to take us over, have you?"

He led them in to see big President Bill Jeffers. Everybody shook hands. Said Jeffers: "Anything you want, just let us know." A U.P. man found them desk space down the hall. They moved in with an armful of mimeographed orders. As an afterthought, Jeffers' assistant provided the officers with an advertising folder, containing a map of the Union Pacific's rail network for them to study.

Thus last week the Army began "operating" all U.S. railroads.

Trains ran as usual. Companies collected and kept fares, as usual. The New York Central's big bald President Frederick Ely Williamson, 67, took over the key eastern region with the rank of colonel. Six other major railroad heads also became uniformed colonels overnight--then continued at their desks. (A lieutenant was even assigned to a four-mile-long, two-employe railroad in Strasburg, Pa. Four days later the Army decided the road could run without his help.) In Washington, the Army's able Chief of Transportation, Major General C. P. Gross, and his knowing staff of borrowed railroadmen, continued to work closely with the railroads in the titanic task of shuttling troops and supplies across the nation.

But if the seizure meant little operationally, the rail crisis set off momentous sound & fury. In the opinion of a "high Washington official" it may have delayed revolts in Germany's puppet nations and cost hundreds of thousands of U.S. lives (see p. 17).

Mid-Game Shift. The President's bold seizure stopped a strike, but did not solve the unrest of the railworkers. Fifteen of the rail unions that gave in (TIME, Jan. 3) were still as angry as the three that held out. Aggressive George M. Harrison of the Railway Clerks, an ardent Rooseveltian for ten years, was not muttering about revenge at the polls. The 15 non-operating unions (with 1,100,000 members) issued a joint blast at their treatment.

They were almost more angry about method than money. The Brotherhoods are the orderly conservatives of U.S. unionism, with a long tradition of protocol in wage negotiations. Their pleas for a wage boost had been shunted about for more than a year. They had spent 45 years building their framework of bargaining, only to have Franklin Roosevelt personally take over their troubles a day before they were to argue their case before their long-established National Mediation Board. To the three holdout unions (who made clear that they had only "postponed" their strike), this was "changing the rules in the middle of the game."

In John L. Lewis' fight, it was the War Labor Board whose rules were successfully circumvented. In the steel strike, Franklin Roosevelt had again intervened while the issue was before WLB. In the rail crisis, the National Mediation Board, two emergency panels, and Economic Stabilizer Fred Vinson had ceased to be arbiters, now were only appellate courts. Unions big enough to be heard at the White House no longer feared unfavorable decisions at lower levels. Franklin Roosevelt, it appeared, was being his own Secretary of Labor. WLB Chairman William H. Davis commented wistfully:

"It certainly would be good government, and . . . clarifying ... if there were one agency that had the final word on all wage problems."

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