More & More Mergers

So many rail mergers are being planned, programmed and petitioned for that, in sorting them out, the offices of the Interstate Commerce Commission resemble a giant classification yard. Last week three meaningful mergers made progress.

> The Chicago and North Western and the Milwaukee Road, so closely linked at 140 points that they have been mulling marriage for almost 30 years, formally asked the ICC to give its go-ahead. A merger would consolidate 20,758 miles of track in 13 states from Chicago to the Pacific, save $30 million annually, and create, so the petition said, "a healthy rail system out of two marginal carriers."

> At an ICC examiner's hearing, the Union Pacific pressed its case to take over the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific. Fourteen protesting competitors claim that such a merger would strip them of $229 million yearly in freight revenues; the actual figure, said the U.P., is more on the order of $17 million.

> The Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard, operating 12,000 miles of track between them, won approval to merge from a three-man federal court in Jacksonville. The same court had previously overruled the ICC and turned down the merger, was ordered to reconsider by the Supreme Court. Nine competing railroads, the Justice Department and railroad labor unions have 60 days to dissent.

Last week's actions bode well for a still bigger merger that has been temporarily sidetracked: the 26,000-mile linking of the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific and the Burlington. The ICC blocked it two months ago by a 6-to-5 vote on grounds that 1) the partners are prosperous and do not need a merger to survive, and 2) a merger would damage the weaker Milwaukee Road and Chicago and North Western. If the Milwaukee should merge with the C.&.N.W., however, that would remove one ICC objection. The other objection appeared to be removed by the Seaboard-Atlantic Coast ruling. The Supreme Court's new doctrine is that prosperous lines can indeed merge, providing that the public good outweighs the antitrust aspects of the case.

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