Alvanley Johnston

Alvanley Johnston was president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and one of the labor leaders whose support had helped Harry S. Truman in two pivotal moments of his political rise. When Johnston later stood with his union against Truman during a threatened nationwide railroad strike, their relationship became a measure of the limits of past loyalty: Johnston’s men could halt the country’s rail traffic, and Truman’s formal authority did not guarantee their compliance.

Political Ally and Labor Leader

Johnston and Alexander F. Whitney, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, had backed Truman in the 1940 Senate race when, as the account puts it, few others would. The two union leaders supplied the lion’s share of the campaign’s money. Their assistance was not confined to that contest: in 1944, they were also deeply involved in the effort to make Truman the running mate of Franklin Roosevelt. By the time they opposed him in labor negotiations, Johnston was not simply another union representative. He was an old ally whose earlier support had helped carry Truman toward the presidency.

The account presents Johnston as a veteran battler in his seventies, paired with Whitney at the head of the two unions capable of stopping rail service across the country. Johnston represented 80,000 locomotive engineers. Whitney, whom Truman knew better and liked, represented more than 200,000 trainmen in 1,145 lodges and possessed the greater power between them. Johnston’s broad girth made it difficult for him to button his suit jacket, and the narrator compares his appearance to a cartoonist’s version of a labor boss. The description gives the pair a vivid physical presence, but their importance lay in the organized strength behind them: together, their unions could stop both passenger and freight movement nationwide.

A Strike Threatens the Railroads

Negotiations between railway management and twenty unions had continued for months. The unions sought higher wages, and Truman had invoked the Railway Labor Act’s sixty-day mediation period to delay a strike. By April, negotiations had broken down, and a walkout was scheduled for May 18. John R. Steelman, serving as Truman’s principal representative, made progress with most of the unions; all but two were prepared to reach an accommodation. The holdouts were Whitney’s and Johnston’s major unions, leaving the possibility of a countrywide shutdown in the hands of men whose past support Truman could not forget.

On May 17, with only a day before the scheduled walkout, Truman summoned Johnston and Whitney to his office. Johnston said the strike had to proceed: “Our men are demanding it.” Truman answered, “I’m going to give you the gun,” and signed an executive order directing the government to seize and operate the railroads beginning the next day. The gesture showed the force of presidential authority, but it did not resolve the dispute. Less than twenty-four hours later, on May 18, the two union leaders agreed to postpone the strike for five days. The postponement bought time; it was not yet a settlement.

Bargaining and Defiance

The additional days brought no quick agreement. Ed Flynn came to Washington to try to persuade Whitney and Johnston, without success. Truman then ordered the coal mines seized and proposed an 18½-cent wage increase for railroad workers—more than his emergency fact-finding board had recommended. The two union leaders viewed the offer unfavorably. Their refusal placed Truman in an increasingly exposed position: he had used his office to prevent an immediate shutdown, but his proposals and the efforts of his intermediaries had not secured their agreement.

On May 23, the day the strike was due to begin at 5:00 p.m. Washington time, Johnston and Whitney were summoned again, along with management officials. The sides were placed in separate rooms while Steelman shuttled between them. When the union leaders again rejected Truman’s offer, Steelman argued that they could not simply say no to a President. They answered that nobody paid attention to this President anyway. Their retort turned a labor negotiation into a direct judgment on Truman’s influence. Johnston’s earlier campaign support had helped Truman rise; now Johnston stood among the leaders resisting his wishes, and the President’s emergency powers had not converted command into consent.

Significance in Truman’s Political Story

Johnston’s role is defined by this contrast between alliance and confrontation. In the 1940 race and the 1944 vice-presidential drive, his union’s support helped Truman at moments when political backing mattered. During the railroad crisis, however, Johnston acted as a representative of workers demanding a strike, not as an ally bound to follow the President. The account does not present the earlier relationship as a guarantee of obedience; instead, it makes that history sharpen the conflict.

The episode also distinguishes the ability to wield formal power from the ability to persuade. Truman could order the railroads seized, and the strike was postponed, but Johnston and Whitney remained unconvinced by his wage proposal. Their unions’ reach gave their refusal national consequences, while their remark about the President exposed how fragile his influence appeared to them. Johnston therefore occupies a small but consequential place in the narrative: an old supporter whose opposition helped reveal that presidential authority, even when backed by an executive order, could not by itself settle a dispute with organized labor.