Ford to Penn

Along the right of way of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton R. R. grows many a carefully-tended flower bed. The crossing watchmen must keep their little shacks trim and orderly, the engineers must carry repair kits and act as veterinaries for minor ailments of their Iron Horses. But all D. T. & I. employes are happy to do extra chores for they are paid above the standard railway scale.

Last week, however, the D. T. & I. flowers drooped slightly and the employes were somewhat perturbed. The big-lettered F O R D on D. T. & I. bridges was destined soon to disappear. Henry Ford, owner of the D. T. & I. had sold his property to an unannounced purchaser. Agent in the transaction was the firm of Charles D. Barney & Co., Manhattan brokers. Probable real purchaser was Pennroad Corp., Pennsylvania Railroad holding company. Whoever the new buyer, the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton's Ole Massa had certainly sold it down the river.

Prosperous was the D. T. & I. under Ford ownership. When Mr. Ford purchased it in 1920 for $5,000,000, railroad men generally decided that the Ford transportation genius was confined to rubber-tired vehicles only. For the D. T. & I. staggered its 343 miles from Detroit and Toledo to Ironton, Ohio, in hopeless and continued depression. It made no money and showed no signs of ever making money. Owner Ford made it pay. He electrified 263 miles of it. He raised salaries that were accustomed to being reduced. He speeded up the freight service (passenger traffic has never been an important D. T. Item). He shared stock with employes and excused them, as far as possible, from working on Sundays. Generous, Mr. Ford was also astute. For the more efficient became the railroad, the more rapidly Ford coal moved north from Ironton and Ford autos moved south from Detroit. And, though the selling price of the road was not announced, there was no doubt of a fat Ford profit. After the Ford improvements, the Interstate Commerce Commission valued the road at something over $11,000,000. Mr. Ford's figure was something over $23,000,000. Probably the sale was made at closer to the Ford than to the I.C.C. estimate.

While Owner Ford was profitably retiring from his excursion into railroad circles, those circles were profoundly agitated by the probability that the Pennsylvania was behind the D. T. & I. purchase. Reasonable seemed this conclusion. Last month was purchased Canton, Baltimore's bustling freight and industrial suburb, by a similarly unnamed principal which later proved to be the Pennsylvania (TIME, June 24). Furthermore, the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton was one of the roads included in the Baltimore & Ohio's plan for a greater and longer B. & O. (TIME, March 4). Just as the Canton purchase was virtually a slice carved out of B. & O.'s own backyard, so the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton seemed to be another Penn scoop.

Wabash Plan. The opening of the present week saw another disturbance of the rail status quo, and again the movement was pro-Pennsylvania and anti-Baltimore & Ohio. The Wabash Railway proposed a plan which aimed at creating a 7,044-mile system with the 2,400-mile Wabash as a nucleus. Major links in the proposed Wabash chain were the Pittsburgh & West Virginia, Wheeling & Lake Erie, Western Maryland, Lehigh Valley. The Wabash plan clashes with the Baltimore & Ohio plan (TIME, March 4) at almost every conceivable point. In the first place, the Wabash itself was the most vital unit in the proposed greater and longer B. & O. From a B. & O. standpoint, the Wabash ambition for its own system is much as if one of the pawns on a chessboard should crown, itself king and start a game of its own. Much of the Wabash petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission was devoted to protest against absorption by the B. & O. to establishing the Wabash as a potent independent. The Western Maryland was also included in the B. & O. scheme and is at present under B. & O. control. Inclusion of the Wheeling & Lake Erie was a thrust against the Van Sweringens. Inclusion of the Pittsburgh & West Virginia would wreck trunk-line plans of the Taplins. A good example of the confusion attendant upon Wabash plan is the fact that the Van Sweringens and the Taplins, long feudists, were united in protest against it.

But the Wabash plan did not conflict with Pennsylvania, which has a 49% stock interest in the Wabash line. By further scrambling an already chaotic jumble of claims and counterclaims, it made more difficult any disturbance of the present situation--a situation with which Pennsylvania Railroad, potent and powerful, seems not ill pleased.