The Unendurable

All through the weekend the U.S. people wondered: Will there be another railroad strike? The memory of the last one --in 1946--was still green.

Hour after hour, the President's labor adviser, John Steelman, sweated through negotiations at the White House with management and labor. They came to nothing. This week, 18 hours before the strike deadline, Harry Truman seized the roads to prevent "a nationwide tragedy." He put Secretary of the Army Royall in charge of the railways, ordered the Army to operate them. Then he gave the three stubborn brotherhoods--the engineers, firemen and switchmen--until 5 o'clock that afternoon to call off the strike.

The brotherhood bosses still refused to comply, apparently determined to make it clear that they would not give in until they were forced. Groups of grim men raced between Government buildings. Newsmen cornered Grand Chief Engineer Alvanley Johnston and demanded to know whether he would call off the strike if enjoined. Snapped Johnston: "Why ask such a damn silly question after what happened to John Lewis?"

A Matter of Minutes. Royall summoned Johnston and his colleagues, the firemen's David Robertson and the switchmen's A. J. Glover, to a last-minute conference at the Pentagon. It, too, was fruitless. Five o'clock passed and the strike order still stood. Then Royall and Assistant Attorney General H. Graham Morison hurried off to Federal Judge T. Alan Goldsborough, who had agreed to stand by in his chambers. Just three weeks ago, Judge Goldsborough had slapped fines of $1,420,000 on John L. Lewis and the U.M.W. It took him only a few minutes to issue a temporary order against the brotherhoods. Hours later the word went out to the nation's railroaders to stay on their jobs. The trains still ran, under Army supervision.

But it had been a bad weekend for the nation. Most railroads had put an-embargo on shipment of perishables. Thousands of vegetable workers in California had already been laid off. Imminent freight and passenger-train cancellations spread confusion. The war of nerves touched virtually every citizen in the land.

The Ultimate Weapon. Recovering its breath this week, the nation wondered: Was this kind of thing going to happen every few years? Strikes in some indus tries could be endured. But a railway strike was unendurable. What had happened to the "model" Railway Labor Act of 1926 which was supposed to relieve the country of such crises?* This was the fourth time since 1941 that the machinery of the act had collapsed.

The act was all right; the trouble was with the behavior of some of the men who were covered by it. When the act's apparatus did not get them what they wanted, the brotherhoods simply threw it away and threatened to use force. In 1941, in 1943, in 1946 and again this year, the brotherhood leaders had gone through the act's elaborate process of negotiation, mediation, conciliation--and then rejected a presidential fact-finding board's recommendations and set a strike date.

Blow the Whistle. The current fight had begun last fall when all the railroad brotherhoods were agitating for wage increases. Some 1,000,000 workers in 17 non-operating brotherhoods accepted a 15 1/2-c--an-hour boost. Two operating brotherhoods with 250,000 members (trainmen and conductors) also accepted the 15 1/2-c- boost.

But the engineers, firemen and switchmen (representing 190,000 railway employees), held out. These three wanted a 30% boost and numerous changes in work, overtime and vacation rules which the railways estimated would add $500 million to payrolls. The issues were complicated. Negotiation, conciliation failed to resolve them. It was a situation for impartial judges to decide.

The fact-finding board appointed by the President last January was beyond any laborman's reproach. Its members were fair-minded men, experienced mediators: Dr. William Leiserson, visiting professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University; Professor William Willard Wirtz of Northwestern University Law School; Chief Justice George Edward Bushness of the Michigan supreme court. It was reasonable to expect that they would give all sides a fair hearing. They took 33 volumes of testimony. Then they recommended some rules changes and the same 15 1/2-c- increase already accepted by the 19 other brotherhoods. Management accepted. The three brotherhoods defiantly blew the strike whistle.

The Rivals. What was behind the stubbornness of the three brotherhood heads?

The best-known of the three was Grand Chief Engineer Johnston who, along with the trainmen's A. F. Whitney, was scornfully denounced by Harry Truman two years ago when the pair tied up the railways. "These two men," the President had rasped--"Mister Whitney and Mister Johnston." Whitney has since forgiven Mr. Truman, and has announced that he will back him for renomination. Johnston is a Republican. He is a plain, blunt man who started his career as a callboy, vaguely resembles John L. Lewis, is publicly crotchety and privately pleasant.

Between 73-year-old Grand Chief Johnston and 72-year-old David Robertson, the wrinkled little chief of the firemen, there has been a long rivalry; they were trying to outdo each other as tough labor leaders. A. J. Glover, the big-boned boss of the switchmen, was newly elected; he also was trying to make a show with his rank & file. But all three leaders were chiefly resentful because railway wages had not kept pace with other industrial wages. Railway workers are no longer at the top of the labor heap. For oldtimers like Johnston and Robertson, this was something to holler about.

But the nation also had an issue. What was the value of a labor covenant which could be rejected the minute it did not suit labor? In the case of the Railway Labor Act, the safety and welfare of the nation was involved. All the misters of the brotherhoods had a lot to explain.

*And which was supposed to be so good that railway workers were exempted from the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act.

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