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The bus fumes had never smelled so good, nor had the rumble of the subways sounded so musical. The great New York City transit strike was over. Now came the financial reckoning. For the bankrupt New York City Transit Authority, the $52 million settlement--$16 million more than the 1963 package--was bad enough, but it was almost microscopic compared with the transit union's original demands of $680 million. The strikers received a 15% wage increase spread over two years and substantially improved fringe benefits, failed to get a requested 32-hour week and six weeks' vacation after one year. To pay for it all, the city, already faced with a 1966 deficit of $300 million, would have to dig still deeper into already depleted coffers.

Like any great drama, the twelve-day strike left profound impressions on the main participants:

>>Republican Mayor John Lindsay, undergoing his baptism by fire, was projected even higher into national prominence for bringing his city safely--if not comfortably--through its worst domestic crisis. Lindsay proved, as he had promised in his campaign, to be everybody's mayor, successfully projected himself as a man who was above the cozy back-room deals that had determined the city's fate under postwar Democratic administrations. He also proved that he could be tough when the situation demanded, took to radio and TV in the strike's last week to give one of the sternest speeches that New York had heard in a long time. "The government of this city," he said, "will not allow the power brokers in our city, or any special interest, to dictate the terms under which it will exist in New York. The paramount issue confronting us today is whether New York City can be intimidated. I say it cannot and will not."

>> Ailing Mike Quill, the invective-hurling president of the Transport Workers Union, probably made his Last Hurrah. Faced with division and opposition within his own union, he seemed to hunger for a final epic fight, openly sought imprisonment. "He wanted to go to jail," A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany noted with a wry jab, "and I wouldn't do anything to take away from his happiness." At week's end Quill was released from Bellevue Hospital and entered a private hospital, a sad and feckless parody of the youth who fought in the Irish rebellion. Worse still, he demonstrated for all to see the sad internal state of his union (no strike benefits, modest treasury) and showed how unconcerned its members were for the lives and welfare of some 8,000,000 New Yorkers.

>> The national labor movement will undoubtedly have a more difficult time pushing its legislative program through Congress this year, may find the New York strike the insuperable obstacle in its attempts to erase "right to work" provisions from the Taft-Hartley Act. In his State of the Union message, President Johnson felt obliged to ask for new legislation to prevent similar strikes. >> The Johnson Administration seemed preoccupied with an attempt to cause Mayor Lindsay political embarrassment. It remained largely mum during the strike, did not denounce the union's fatuous demands, then piously reproved Lindsay for a settlement that "violated" federal wage-price guidelines.

>> New York, despite its many bruises, may eventually find the strike a blessing in disguise. Nothing could have prepared the city so well for the drastic surgery Lindsay advocates. The strike showed particularly that transportation must be reorganized, gave a mighty push to the new mayor's controversial plan to merge the hard-pressed transit system with the rich Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. Most immediate benefit: conversion seven weeks ahead of schedule of Fifth and Madison avenues into one-way thoroughfares. Traffic has never moved so well.

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