Turnabout

Last summer, in an across-the-border display of short tempers (TIME, Aug.11, 25), Canadian railroads were accused of sticky slowness in returning empty U.S.-owned coal cars. Last week the shoe was on the other foot. At the season when Canada's need of boxcars was greatest--to move the grain harvest from prairie to port--U.S. railroads were far behind in their return of closed cars.

Told about it, crotchety old Colonel J. Monroe ("Steamboat") Johnson, head of the U.S. Office of Defense Transportation and a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, went into action. Result: the I.C.C. ordered U.S. railroads, which had 12,177 more Canadian boxcars than Canada had of theirs, to get 5,000 of them off U.S. tracks promptly, even if empty.

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