Turnabout

Long before he won control of the New York Central management, Robert R. Young liked to scourge the "goddamned bankers" and attack railroad operators while he championed the poor, neglected passengers. Crusader Bob's most effective ploy was a cartoon of a pig. fat and sassy in his freight car, looking down on a bedraggled, luggage-laden human traveler and his family changing trains. Hooted the ad: "A hog can cross the country without changing trains--but YOU can't."

One night last week, more than a carload of human travelers hooted back at Robert R. Young. The occasion was a commuters' meeting in New York's Rockland County to protest Young's plan to stop carrying passengers on the Central's 71-year-old West Shore line. The line meanders 142 miles along the Hudson between Weehawken (N.J.) and Albany (N.Y.), carries 4,000 commuters a day into Manhattan. According to Young, it is losing some $3.000,000 annually on passengers. At the meeting, a young matron strode determinedly onstage carrying a pig labeled "Young Bob." Beside her stood another flushed lady holding aloft a sign saying: "A hog will be able to ride the West Shore. Why can't we?"

The passengers refused to listen to New York Central speakers who talked only about losses. "Life," cried one outraged commuter, sounding very much like the flaming Bob Young of yesteryear, "is not a bowl of economics." Snorted another:

"The brutal fact is that you are more interested in hogs than in people." Not since Robert R. Young had done it himself had anyone talked so harshly about a railroad tycoon.

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