Neighborhood Row

Like the good neighbors they are, the U.S. and Canada have had no big rows for a long time. But for weeks, over one of the smaller problems in neighborhood relations, they have been going at each other like suburbanites screaming across the fence about footprints in a flower bed.

The root of the trouble is the acute, continent-wide shortage of railroad freight cars. Lately there have been many more Canadian boxcars lagging in the U.S., awaiting return, than U.S. boxcars in Canada. But in gondolas, the open-top cars that at this season bring in Canada's winter coal supply, Canada currently owes the U.S. railroads about 14,800 cars.

A few weeks ago raucous Colonel J. Monroe Johnson, ODT director, issued an ultimatum: rail shipments of coal would be embargoed unless something was done about the laggard cars within twelve hours. Canadian bigwigs hurried to Washington, agreed to cut the adverse balance to 8,000 cars of all types, even if it meant returning them empty.

Last week, "Steamboat" Johnson sounded again. The embargo would go on this week unless Canada, 1,750 cars above its quota, got into line. "We need those cars," said he, "and, damn it we're going to get 'em." That carried the teapot tempest right into the Dominion Cabinet. It dug through piles of memoranda, stacks of statistics, sadly concluded that Canada's railroaders had failed to keep their word mainly because they could not bring themselves to return the cars empty. Get going, said the Cabinet and hang the expense.

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