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Official spokesman for U. S. railroads is President John Jeremiah Pelley of the Association of American Railroads. Last week, in common with many another railroad bigwig, J. J. Pelley was irked beyond measure. It was not merely that U. S. railroads face their greatest crisis. It was not merely that the Interstate Commerce Commission last fortnight gave the roads a 5.3% freight rate rise instead of the 15% the A.A.R. had requested (TIME, March 21). The cinder that really got in Mr. Pelley's eye was the fact that when President Roosevelt finally held his long-promised railroad conference last week he pointedly neglected to invite J. J. Pelley or any other working railroad man to attend. Puffing in their wrath like Hudson engines on a 2% grade, the A.A.R. directors retired to Chicago to match Franklin Roosevelt's conference with one of their own.

Fourteen. Nearest approach to an A.A.R. representative at Franklin Roosevelt's conference was white-thatched Carl Raymond Gray, who at 70 retired last year from the presidency of the Union Pacific and is famed for his modernization of that big line, his benevolent relations with employes. The others who attended were ICC Commissioners Walter M. W. Splawn, Joseph Bartlett Eastman and Charles Delahunt Mahaffie, Senators Burton Kendall Wheeler and Harry S. Truman of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee. Chairman Clarence Frederick Lea of the House Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee. President George Harrison of the Railway Labor Executives Association, President Henry Bruere of Manhattan's Bowery Savings Bank, Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce Ernest Draper, RFC Chairman Jesse Jones, SEC Chairman William 0. Douglas and Farm Security Administrator Will W. Alexander. After these 14 worthies had put their heads together with President Roosevelt, he informed a press conference that the group would meet again in a few days, that the major topic had been the old, old one of railroad consolidation. Other topics: elimination of railroad holding companies, Governmental renting of the lines until they had been modernized and integrated, development of a special court to speed railroad reorganizations.

Two days later Franklin Roosevelt's railroad conference met again. This time major topics were: 1) creation of a new agency probably within the ICC to have complete jurisdiction over railroad reorganizations and to cut down the stupendous railroad bonded indebtedness; 2) amendment of the Bankruptcy Act to prevent minority groups of security holders from sidetracking railroad reorganizations as they do now with such effectiveness that no road has come through reorganization in five years; 3) establishment of a Federal authority to compel consolidation.