Great Northern Pacific

Twenty-seven years ago after a great public uproar President Roosevelt and the Supreme Court sundered as a violation of the Anti-Trust Law the consolidation of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads. Last week the Interstate Commerce Commission approved putting them back together. What was illegal in 1903 became legal in 1930.

While sanctioning the merger of these two great transcontinentals into a 15,386 mile system, the Interstate Commerce Commission exhibited a determination to uphold its general consolidation plan (TIME, Dec. 30). Three years ago was formed the Great Northern Pacific Co. to take over the G. N. and the N. P. In its Interstate Commerce Commission application the G. N. P. Co. naturally included in the merger the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, jointly owned by the G. N. and the N. P., serving them as their great high way into Chicago. The Interstate Commerce Commission's general consolidation plan called for a separate system around the C. B. & Q. Last week the Commission approved the unification of N. P. and G. N. into the G. N. P., but excluded the C. B. & Q. from their plan.

Such a decision pleased nobody. Ralph Budd, G. N. President, Charles Donnelly. N. P. President, declared that the G. N. P. had to have the C. B. & Q. to reach Chicago from Minneapolis, that it was the eastern pivot of the whole merger. Sena tors and congressmen from the northwest flayed the juncture of these two roads, insisted that it would reduce competition in that territory to the vanishing point.

Last week brought a significant break in the eastern rail consolidation deadlock, when the Baltimore & Ohio withdrew from the Interstate Commerce Commission its self-made merger application. This was taken to mean that the B. & O. accepted the Interstate Commerce Commission's plan, that it would shortly file a new application to execute the consolidation the Commission had mapped out for it. Roads in the Commission's B. & O. merger: Reading, Jersey Central, Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Susquehanna, Detroit, Toledo & Ironton ( 1/2), Chicago & Alton, Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville ( 1/2).

Of prime interest is the B. & O.'s merger with Reading which controls Jersey Central. B. & 0. owns 34% of Reading; New York Central owns 25%. General was the belief that N. Y. C. had agreed to transfer its Reading stock to B. & 0., thus giving B. & O. control and a guaranteed entry to New York. For B. &O. to be the first road to accept the Interstate Commerce Commission's merger plan was not surprising, for thus this great system has made a deliberate and successful effort to accommodate the U. S. Government. No rail president is more popular in Washington than B. & O.'s Daniel Willard. He first won the favor of President Harding in 1922 when he promptly settled on equitable terms the great shipmen's strike for his line while other carrier presidents were stubbornly bucking the union. White House rail patronage was shifted from the Pennsylvania to the B. & O. where it remains to this day for all presidential excursions westward. The B. & O. carried Herbert Hoover back and forth across the continent during his campaign, is today his favorite road.*

President Willard's remarkable rehabilitation of the B. & O. in his. 20 years as its chief is responsible for this favor among people as well as Presidents. Its gross earnings in 1910 were 81 million. Last year they were 245 million. Almost half a billion dollars have been put into the system for improvements. President Willard--"Old Dan" to oldtime railroaders like himself--has a veritable passion for his system. He ides it day after day in what he calls his "business car." He spends Sundays in its grimy Baltimore headquarters building. He has a conscience in dealing with labor. Any man can go directly to him with his troubles.

When he became president, the line was a dilapidated third-rate affair, a minstrel joke. He stopped all passenger advertising until he had improved the service to a point where he had something good to advertise. He put on no showy trains, built no fancy stations, but grubbed away at bettering the foundations of railroading--the track and equipment. Gradually as the service improved, he spread the doctrine of "neighborliness" among shippers and travelers along his line. He started to advertise again. He named his fast trains, jacked-up their dining car service. He infused his employes so thoroughly with his idea of personal service that the B. & O. could advertise with a sincerity equal to its novelty: "70,000 of us invite you to travel on the B. & O."

*When a President travels, the initial road out of Washington manages his whole itinerary, even beyond its own lines, equips his through train, is directly responsible for his safety.

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