Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was one of the two major railroad unions whose leaders could bring passenger and freight traffic across the United States to a halt. In 1946, its president, Alvanley Johnston, stood with Harry S. Truman’s old ally Alexander F. Whitney against a proposed wage settlement, making the union a central force in a confrontation that tested the President’s authority and their past political ties.

Representation and Leverage

Johnston spoke for 80,000 locomotive engineers. Alongside Whitney, who led the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen and represented more than 200,000 trainmen in 1,145 lodges, he had the power to shut down rail service nationwide. Both men were in their seventies and veteran labor leaders; the book emphasizes the scale of Johnston’s influence by placing his union’s membership alongside Whitney’s much larger organization. Together, the two unions could stop passenger service and freight movement from coast to coast.

Political Ties to Truman

The union leaders’ resistance carried a personal and political history. In Harry S. Truman’s difficult 1940 Senate race, Whitney and Johnston had backed him when few others would, supplying the largest share of his campaign funds. They had also been prominent in the 1944 effort to make him Franklin D. Roosevelt’s running mate. By 1946, their role had reversed: Truman was President, and the two men were among the principal obstacles to his effort to avert a railroad strike. The narrative presents their earlier support not as a guarantee of agreement, but as the source of Truman’s particular exasperation when they opposed his settlement.

The 1946 Strike Confrontation

After months of negotiations involving railroad management and twenty unions, eighteen unions were ready to reach an accommodation, but the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen held out. The unions had demanded higher wages. Truman had invoked the Railway Labor Act’s sixty-day mediation period to delay a strike, but negotiations broke down and a walkout was set for May 18. John R. Steelman, serving as Truman’s principal representative, tried to move talks forward without securing agreement from Johnston and Whitney.

On May 17, with a day remaining before the scheduled walkout, Truman summoned the two leaders. Johnston and Whitney said they had to proceed because their members demanded it. Truman responded by signing an executive order for the government to seize and operate the railroads, effective the following day. Less than twenty-four hours later, the union leaders agreed to postpone the strike for five days. The order thus brought immediate pressure to bear, but did not settle the dispute.

Renewed Bargaining and Significance

During the five-day postponement, efforts to secure a compromise continued. On May 23, Johnston and Whitney met again with Truman’s negotiators and railroad-management representatives, with Steelman moving between separate rooms. When the two leaders rejected Truman’s offer, Steelman argued that refusing a President was unprecedented; the union leaders replied that people paid little attention to this President. Their response captured the weakness of appeals to presidential status alone in the face of their organizations’ ability to halt the rail system.

The Brotherhood’s significance in this episode lay both in the strength of its membership and in its place within a two-union alliance. Johnston did not lead the confrontation alone: his union’s power became decisive in combination with Whitney’s larger organization. The earlier campaign support these leaders had given Truman sharpened the personal dimension of the dispute, while the threatened shutdown made their bargaining position a matter of national consequence.