Last-Minute Switch

Could it really happen? There had never been a complete, swiftly paralyzing railroad strike in the U.S. Yet here it was, pounding down the main line at full throttle, brushing aside the minutes, highballing toward the seemingly inevitable collision.

In the stations, travelers read the signs that warned of delays, heard loudspeakers blare warnings that arrivals were not guaranteed. But they bought their tickets as usual. Out of Chicago's Union Station chuffed the Pennsylvania's Washington flyer, Liberty Limited, booked almost solid, as usual. In Newark a commuter electric train pulled out for its dank run through the Hudson River tubes to Manhattan. But out went a notice: that would be the last Hudson & Manhattan train to New York City.

The minutes ticked by. In Washington, less than 24 hours after he had ordered Government seizure of the rails, President Truman picked up his telephone. Once before, in the last half hour, he had talked with two men in Cleveland who could prevent the awful smash: Alexander Fell Whitney, the big-jawed, well-tailored president of the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen (211,000 members) and Alvanley Johnston, the crotchety Grand Chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (78,000 members). Now he talked again, and this time--just 26 minutes before the strike deadline--he got a promise. The strike was off, for five days, and the Messrs. Whitney & Johnston would return to Washington and resume negotiations with the railroad operators.

"I Told You So." Promptly, the President told the nation. Travelers slapped each other's backs. A lot of people said, "Sure, I told you so--they didn't dare pull it."

But that night the nation got a foretaste of what a railroad strike would be like. Trains clanked into towns--and stopped. Freights stood still on many a main line. At Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station many rail workers went to their lockers, put away their uniform caps and walked off. At Grand Central Station the Twentieth Century Limited was dead on its wheels seven hours after the President's announcement. So were hundreds of trains across the nation, in the worst passenger jam of modern railroading history.

For, in spite of the truce, engineers and trainmen did not go back to work until they had heard from their union bosses-- and the word was slow in coming. They made it evident that Harry Truman was not their boss. The temper of the men who have been called "the aristocrats of labor" was clearly for a show of their power. Many grumbled because the strike had not come off as planned: "This was our chance, and we've muffed it." At a trainmen's meeting in New York City, announcement of the postponement was roundly booed. Hudson & Manhattan men stayed off the job 26 hours.

Higher Hopes. The train tangle was uncoiled overnight. Next morning a Pennsy limited from Cleveland, only two hours late, delivered 73-year-old Alexander Whitney and 71-year-old Alvanley Johnston in Washington. They beamed confidence. They interpreted the President's assurance that "further progress could be made toward a settlement" as his backing for upping the disputed 16-c--an-hour wage increase. If the ten-months-old wage dispute could be settled, the fight over working rules changes* could be left for future negotiation. But the trainmen had proved one thing: if a strike does come, the Government will have a hell of a time running the railroads. That danger was not yet over, but by this week hopes were high that it soon would be.

* The unions have asked 44 rules changes. Among them: pay for terminal waiting time; freight train limit of 70 cars (and 14 for passenger trains); ice water in freight trains; the companies to furnish, clean and press all uniforms; an extra day's pay for "doubling a hill," i.e., making two trains out of one to get it over a grade. The railroads want 29 changes, most of them aimed at existing ''featherbedding." Among them: elimination of the "100-mile concept" as the equivalent of an eight-hour day; elimination of minimum crews on many runs.

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