Book Reviews : The Politics of Railroad Co-ordination. By EARL LATHAM. (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1959. Pp vii, 338. $6.50.)

Date01 September 1960
DOI10.1177/106591296001300331
Published date01 September 1960
AuthorAlex Gottfried
Subject MatterArticles
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819
The verdict is, then, that this is an interesting book in a subject-matter

already rich in available scholarly analyses of its type.
.
WHITAKER T. DEININGER
San Jose State College
The Politics of Railroad Co-ordination. By EARL LATHAM. (Boston: Harvard
University Press, 1959. Pp vii, 338. $6.50.)
Professor Latham has written another excellent study of &dquo;the group basis
of politics,&dquo; although here the focus of attention is more specifically the politics
of administration. The use of this framework of power (pressure) analysis is
most appropriate in the story of the attempts by the New Deal to lead and guide
the railroads into the kind of industrial self-government which was the under-
lying philosophy of the NRA. But here the chosen administrative instrument
was the Federal Co-ordinator of Transportation and not the empire of General
Johnson; and the central figure in this unusal experiment was Joseph B. Eastman.
This is primarily the story of Eastman’s efforts to encourage or direct the
railroads to implement the purposes of the Emergency Railroad Transportation
Act of 1933. These can be simply stated as attempts to salvage the railroads
from possible ruin or bankruptcy by self-regulation (rather than by public owner-
ship or operation) through the adoption of policies to reduce waste and prevent-
able expense.
Eastman’s efforts were unsuccessful: in three years the law was allowed to
lapse, and the office of Co-ordinator was liquidated. The author holds the
organized railroads chiefly responsible, aided and abetted by railway labor unions,
and to a lesser degree by the administrative style of Mr. Eastman. When the
railroads refused to be exhorted toward certain goals of rationalization and when
therefore the Coordinator threatened the use of his formal authority, the
carriers, in effect, withdrew their consent to regulation. When the railway unions
decided that the Co-ordinator’s policies no longer promised the effectuation of
their short-run...

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