Again, Frustration

Again, Oris Paxton Van Sweringen, 49 and Mantis James Van Sweringen, 47, Cleveland brothers, are frustrated in their plans for a fourth eastern railroad system. The Interstate Commerce Commission again last week rejected their revised plan for joining the Great Lakes to Atlantic ports.

Four years ago the brothers had acquired enough grip on the Nickel Plate, the Erie, the Pere Marquette, the Hocking Valley and the Chesapeake & Ohio to ordain a great railroad system (the Nickel Plate) like the New York Central, the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio--if the I. C. C. would not disapprove. Two years ago the I. C. C. did disapprove, chiefly because the Nickel Plate was to be the holding company.

Once frustrated, the Van Sweringens shifted their weights from their Nickel Plate foot to their Chesapeake & Ohio foot. They would create a C. & O. system --which would include the Hocking Valley (already absorbed by the C. & O.), the Pere Marquette and the Erie. The Nickel Plate might enter in later in subordinate alliance--if the I. C. C. would not disapprove.

Last week the I. C. C. did disapprove. The C. & O. might absorb the Pere Marquette, it declared, but not the Erie. Again the Van Sweringens were frustrated and also had their pyramid system of finance roundly rebuked by the I. C. C.

What would happen to the Erie, forced out of the Van Sweringen plan, the I. C. C. would not, of course, forecast.

But an apparently irrelevant fact stood like a prognosticating index finger. A month ago the Pennsylvania withdrew its long support from Leonor Fresnel Loree's fifth eastern railroad system and paid him 63 million dollars to drop the matter (TIME, May 7). For getting Mr. Loree out of the railroads' way, the Pennsylvania was to get passage along the southern shore of Lake Erie to Chicago.

The Erie runs along that southern shore of Lake Erie, as does the Nickel Plate and the New York Central. Might the I. C C some day "allocate" the Nickel Plate or Erie to the Pennsylvania?