"On the Melancholy Side"

The "roundup," a quick look at people in scattered places, was invented by newspapers, borrowed with spectacular success by radio. Last week the New York Times used it with good results. To 18 Times correspondents round the world went cabled orders for a 600-word interview with a "common man" in each country.

To get common men as much alike as possible in pay and social position the world over, the Times chose not-so-common railroad engineers ("theoretically, they see life from the same level--the locomotive-cab window," were above average in pay, but average in viewpoint). The answers filled 16 columns, added up "generally on the melancholy side, with only a faint edging of hope." Excerpts:

P: Lindesay Parrott interviewed Takao Takatogawa in Tokyo: "His Government ration . . . consists only of rice, sweet potatoes and seaweed. . . . Because charcoal costs $4 a sack (half a month's rent), his wife and daughter have to go out into the country and pick up sticks to burn. . . . 'The next winter is more worrisome to me [than the next war],' he says."

P: From Drew Middleton in Moscow: "Serge Prokhovitch Zolnikov . . . makes about ten runs a month, [covers] about . . . 3)725 miles.. . . His regular pay and bonuses bring him . . . $666 to $750 a month, a good salary in the Soviet Union. . . .* Like all Russians, he looks forward to the completion ... of the Five Year Plans . . . when he and his family will have more food, more clothes. . . ."

P: Sam Pope Brewer wired from Madrid: "An engineer . . . starts at 8,000 pesetas (about $560) a year. It doesn't buy much. 'Can anyone live without buying from the black market?' I asked. 'Nobody,' Engineer Pepe Jimenez answered. ... He thinks the Franco regime has helped the working man." (Timesman Brewer added: "Anyone who thinks otherwise is unlikely to be an engineer.")

P: Meyer Berger found George Teese, a New York Central engineer who owns a 1937 Packard, at home in Harmon on Hudson, N. Y.: "George and his wife, Rita, have a centrally heated, spotless, well-furnished six-room apartment. The Teeses don't save much . . . with prices as they are, but they live well ... a roast every day since the meat shortage ended. This year George has averaged about $600 a month. 'It's a strain, usually 16 hours a day, but a man would be a fool or a loafer not to get it while it's there.' "

The Times summed up: "[The Swede's] $37.50 a week . . . even enables him to keep his 16-year-old son in college. The French engineer earns good pay, but black markets keep decent rations, shoes and clothing out of his grasp.. . . The man in the cab in India, on $39 a month, never sees fruit for his family, rarely gets meat. The veteran engineer in London still struggles for comfort. Good food is hard to get, clothing too high-priced for him.. . . Only in Stockholm and New York does the engineer know true comfort."

* Or in the U.S.

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