RAILROADS: No Deal

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For a few hours last week, the fair wind of compromise blew in the New York Central fight, but then the storm clouds gathered and both sides started thundering. Rumors of a compromise started when Robert R. Young's Texas millionaire friends, Clinton W. Murchison and Sid W. Richardson, made a flying trip to Manhattan to talk to the Central's President William White and some of his directors. Afterward, the Texans flew back home and the word went out that no compromise was possible in the bitter fight.

Who asked for a compromise? The Central, snapped Young. But Central President White snapped back that Clint Murchison made the offer. The compromise was for a new board of directors with six for the present Central management and eight for Bob Young's faction, plus Young as board chairman. But both the Central and Railroader Young turned it down. Back in Texas, Murchison said: "I was the one who suggested the meeting. I suggested it with the idea that any kind of a compromise is better than a bloody fight. And I thought we had Mr. Young in line, but apparently we didn't, since Mr. Young doesn't seem to want any kind of a compromise. Mr. White thought we were there representing Mr. Young. We weren't. We were there representing Murchison and Richardson, that's all."

Then Murchison cleared up another question that had been hanging fire for weeks. Did he and Sid Richardson actually own the 800,000 shares of New York Central stock they were supposed to have bought from the Chesapeake & Ohio railroad? Central President William White flatly announced that they did not. Said Murchison: He and Richardson came into actual possession of the stock this week, and "we're going to vote it for Young."