From Room No. 13

For nine days in the grand ballroom of Chicago's Palmer House, 1.500 representatives of 21 standard railway unions and a committee of nine managers representing 210 Class 1 U. S. roads stubbornly locked horns over the matter of railroad wages. Time after time the conference was on the brink of rupture.

A 20% reduction of rail employes' wages would pay the railroads' tax bill--nearly a million a day. That was what the managers had come to Chicago hoping to get.

What the Railway Labor Executives' Association would agree to was a continuation for another year of last year's Willard agreement--10% temporary deduction from the present basic pay scale (TIME, Feb. 8). In renewing the 1932 agreement, railway Labor wanted it made plain that while the pact was in operation, neither side was to apply to the Board of Mediation for revision of the basic scale.

Having blasted away at each other all week through an amplifying system which made every murmur an angry shout, the labor executives' committee and the railway executives adjourned from the smoky ballroom to Room No. 13. Conspicuously not present at the knee-to-knee parley was fatherly President Daniel ("Uncle Dan") Willard of the B. & 0. who, with amiable President David Brown Robertson of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, patched together the existing wage arrangement. And although present, President Robertson was no longer the voice of railway labor. New leaders were General Manager William Francis Thiehoff of Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, onetime section laborer, and President Alexander Fell Whitney of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, onetime news butcher. Three times during the day the meeting disbanded. Three times it reconvened. At 9.20 p. m. a decision was reached.

Back in the ballroom, the 1,500 union delegates heard the terms: the Willard-Robertson agreement will be continued for nine months, expiring Oct. 31. Either side may begin pay negotiations with the B. 0. M. on or after June 15. If the carriers serve notice for a basic pay reduction, the unions agree to expedite the normally lengthy proceedings by acting "in a collective manner ... as expeditiously as reasonably possible."

Said Mr. Thiehoff: "We signed in a spirit of compromise and in the face of immediate necessity. I'm sore but satisfied."

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