Situation Bad

In the postwar ride of the U.S. economy to peacetime heights, everybody seemed to forget the fact that the glittering boom was carried in the lowly freight car. Last week nobody could overlook the fact.

Across the U.S., loading platforms and warehouses were jampacked with marooned goods. Shippers of everything from cement to washing machines frantically called for freight cars; some were lucky to get 10% of their minimum needs. In the Midwest, grain belt farmers stared nervously at grain-choked elevators, wondered whether they would be cleared before 1947 crops came in. It was the worst freight-car shortage in 25 years.

Hunt for a Villain. In Washington, a Senate committee was shrilly trying to find out why. ODT's J. Monroe Johnson led off by accusing 1) CPA, for not allocating enough steel for cars and 2) the railroads, for not ordering enough cars. With the U.S. in immediate need of 100,000 freight cars, railroads have so far placed orders for only 78,000. What the railroads should do, said Johnson, was order at least 250,000. That would make it worthwhile for car companies to set up mass production lines.

Railroad men snorted that Colonel Johnson was talking through his bureaucratic hat. Railroads ordered 9,000 cars in January alone, would order more if production was speeded up and there was assurance that the cars could be made soon. But the present production rate, 2,500 a month, did not even match the junking rate of 5,000 to 7,000 a month.

Villain Found? Some railroad men laid the blame to lack of steel. Only 48,000 tons of steel a month, said they, were allocated for freight cars in 1946 under CPA's "voluntary set-aside" policy. It would take 180,000 tons to turn out the needed monthly minimum of 10,000 cars. The automakers, they cried, were getting far more than their share of steel, while railroads were getting the same percentage (9%) that they got during the war. Snapped Railway Age: "Of all the tremendous tonnage of steel freed for civilian use when war production ceased, the railroads have received not one pound. . . ." But that was only part of the trouble. The U.S. was finally paying for depression and war years which had kept car building far below needs. If car builders got the steel they needed--and got production up enough--the pinch might be eased before it turned into a crisis. But, to make that possible, some industries, perhaps automaking, would have to lose some of their steel and trim production.

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