RAILROADS: Signal Victory

Little businessmen along George P. McNear Jr.’s Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad were tired of the four-month strike on the road which had kept them from shipping grain, coal and steel. They were also mad enough four months later to do something about it. Nineteen shippers made up a $10,000 pool, used it to hire a smart lawyer. He went into Federal Court with a novel plea: the T. P. & W. (though highly solvent), was “physically bankrupt,” so a receiver should be appointed to run the trains.

There were no precedents in the books, so Judge J. Leroy Adair set one. Last week, he named a receiver, told him to start running the trains. For once, the consumers had won.