(See Cover) Lumbering along a street in Washington, an old railroad fireman named H. E. Gilbert recalled his private meeting with the President of the U.S. earlier that day. Gilbert turned to his companion. "You know," he said, "today's events make me prouder than ever that I'm an American. Where else in the world could an old country boy like me say no to the President and then walk out of his office?"
That no, uttered two weeks ago, resounded across the nation. By turning down the presidential proposal to have U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg act as arbitrator in the railroad labor dispute, Ed Gilbert, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, and the four union leaders who joined him, brought the old struggle to its last mile. And in uttering his predictable no, Gilbert demonstrated the fact that no man better represents the issues in the great featherbedding fight.
Old Iron Jaw. Members of his union call Gilbert "Old Iron Jaw," and the nickname fits his character as well as his physiognomy. For more than four years, he has kept on saying no. He says it quietly, often with a mild smile, but the answer nevertheless has an oak en firmness about it.
Fireman Gilbert's character and personal style are marvelously well suited to his role as a rearguard battler, a staver-off of the future. He is, says an official of Gilbert's union, "oldfashioned, unsophisticated and basic." He does not smoke or drink, and rarely swears. He once joined a country club but soon quit because he disapproved of the drinking the other members did. His recreations center on his home in a suburb of Cleveland: broiling steaks in the yard, playing pingpong, showing home movies. He and his wife sometimes have guests for square dancing in the basement. On his $29,300-a-year salary, he allows himself one uncharacteristic extravagance: a coral-colored Cadillac. It is really not an extravagance, he says. He has to travel a lot in the course of his presidential duties, and he says he can get around much more readily in his car than by public transportation. And in a big car "you don't get so jostled and tired as you would in a small car."
One Fare Short. Gilbert was born in 1906 on a little farm near Ethel, Mo., and even the town fits the pattern—its population was close to 300 then, is now about 250. When he was eight he started working on his father's horse-drawn delivery wagon. After he finished high school in 1925, he got a job with an Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe signal gang, working along the tracks from Missouri to Chicago. Earning $22.56 a week, pretty good money in the mid-1920s, he married his longtime sweetheart. Bent on settling in Chicago, he went on to the big city alone because he did not have enough money for her fare. As soon as he could get a railroad pass, he brought his bride to Chicago. For nine years Gilbert worked as a fireman on the Alton Railroad. In those days railroad firemen worked hard. In heat so intense that it once made his nose bleed, Gilbert sometimes shoveled as much as 20 tons of coal in the course of a 16-hour day. He signed up as a member of Chicago Lodge 707 of the Brotherhood (he still retains his membership in that local), but he never in his years as a working fireman took part in any railroad strike.