Last summer, in an across-the-border display of short tempers (TIME, Aug.11, 25), Canadian railroads were accused of sticky slowness in returning empty U.S.-owned coal cars. Last week the shoe was on the other foot. At the season when Canada's need of boxcars was greatest—to move the grain harvest from prairie to port—U.S. railroads were far behind in their return of closed cars.
Told about it, crotchety old Colonel J. Monroe ("Steamboat") Johnson, head of the U.S. Office of Defense Transportation and a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission, went into action. Result: the I.C.C. ordered U.S. railroads, which had 12,177...
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