"These Two Men"

Labor

The two big-bodied, grim-faced men sat in their green-walled hotel suites in Washington and listened as the President rawhided them over the radio. Alexander Fell Whitney's lips were taut, his eyes were on the ceiling. He said not one word. Alvanley Johnston grunted only once, mumbling "Yes, sir," when Harry Truman held himself up as "a friend of labor."

Who were "these two men?" Even their names were barely known to the country at large. Was Alexander Whitney any relation to the Whitneys? Who was this man Johnston? The people (and the President) hardly knew how to pronounce his first name (Al-van-lee).

They looked exactly like what they are: oldtime railroad hands who had prospered after their retirement from hard labor. Alexander Fell Whitney is an affable man who asks almost everybody on second meeting to "Call me Al." He is square-shouldered and peppery, a handsome, wavy-haired oldster (73) with a keen eye for his well-tailored clothes and his role as an "Important Man." Alvanley Johnston stepped down from the cab of a locomotive and into a rumpled blue suit about 40 years ago. At 71, his blue eyes still have the engineer's squint, his round face the deep lines of a man who has long worked outdoors.

Neither is subtle, complex or daring. Whitney is a well-read man who likes to lace his speeches with literary allusions. Johnston (nobody calls him Al) is a plain, blunt man who almost never makes a speech, puts on a front of gruff irascibility.

The brotherhoods, forged in the fires and blood of the 1877 rail strikes (see cut), now are rich, conservative, and strictly disciplined. Whitney and Johnston typify the transition. Each is a proud, rugged individualist who rules his tight little empire with strong hands, who has settled himself at the top of his union heap by keeping a strong thumb on the opposition.

"Miracle Man." Al Whitney's father was a circuit-riding preacher in Iowa. Al had little schooling. At 15 he invested $2 in a basket of fruit and candy, boarded an Illinois Central train at Cherokee, and told the conductor that he was the new candy butcher. At 17 he was a brakeman, at 26 a freight conductor and a union member who applied evangelistic fervor to his fellow workers' grievances. He got on the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen's national payroll 43 years ago. He has never been off it (present salary: $17,500). He has bitterly fought his brotherhood's conservatives as well as the railroads' bosses. In 1928, after 21 years as a vice president, he got what he had always wanted: the presidency.

Whitney loves acclaim: his official biographer refers to him as "the miracle man of railroad wage movements." He considers himself a political leader on the liberal side, likes to quote Single-Taxer Henry George. He has lent his name to several left-wing organizations, some of them Communist-hued. He was an early and ardent supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and thought several times that he would become his Secretary of Labor.

He lives on a scale befitting his eminence. There is an organ in his $50,000 lakeshore house near Cleveland. Outside, a small herd of deer and a covey of pheasants cavort on the grounds. His recreation room is equipped with Pullman berths for visiting union brothers.

"No Banker." Even though his Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is the aristocrat of rail unions, stocky Alvanley Johnston is not the aristocrat of rail union leaders. Except for blunders which almost wrecked it, his 21-year career at the top has been notable for stodgy conservatism and heavy-handed secrecy.

Johnston, onetime callboy, engine wiper, fireman and engineer on the Great Northern, had been a B. of L.E. official 16 years when he became its Grand Chief Engineer (a title he loves to roll on his tongue) in 1925. Besides the title, he also inherited the union's sour financial ventures--notably a bank and a $15,000,000 burst bubble in Florida real estate. His inaugural address: "I am no banker."

In the next half-dozen years he proved his claim. He extricated the brotherhood from 30 of its 36 fiscal schemes. But he also implicated it and himself in a messy $10,000,000 bank failure--Cleveland's short-lived Standard Trust Bank, successor to the Engineers' National.

Johnston was indicted along with Standard's slick C. Stirling Smith for juggling B. of L.E. collateral of doubtful value to window-dress Standard's shakiness. The Grand Chief Engineer had to admit on the witness stand that, as president of the predecessor bank, he had borrowed some of its funds for stockmarket speculations--at a $36,000 loss to the bank. Along with Smith, previously convicted as an embezzler, Johnston was found guilty of misapplying funds and making false entries. An Ohio appellate court tossed out the Johnston conviction as against the weight of evidence, granted a new trial; then the case was dropped.

In the dozen years since, his brotherhood has regained financial health. A widower, he takes little part in Cleveland affairs. He shuns publicity, lives quietly with his daughter, son-in-law and grandson. Cleveland seldom hears of him. Until last week, with his picture on the front page almost daily, few Clevelanders would have known him as he passed on the street.

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