Nickel Victory

Every day in Manhattan hundreds of Interborough Rapid Transit subways charge through the warm odorous gloom underneath the streets. Uptown they soar to daylight on elevated tracks, downtown they dip beneath the east river to Brooklyn. I. R. T. advertisements say that 1,000,000 people ride them daily. Each ride costs a nickel. I. R. T. potentates have long claimed that the nickel fare is not enough to meet expenses.

They wanted a 7-c- fare. So sure were they that a 7-c- fare would some day become effective that last week they had in readiness millions of 7-c- slugs to be distributed among subway-riding Manhattanites, Brooklynites.

But last week the U. S. Supreme Court, which had been probing into I. R. T. affairs, opined (Justices Willis Van Devanter, George Sutherland, Pierce Butler dissenting) that the 7-c- fare was unnecessary.

To Mayor James John Walker the decision brought political joy because he had championed the nickel fare. To Lawyer Charles Evans Hughes it brought legal melancholy because he had drawn up the I. R. T. brief. On Wall Street, I. R. T. stocks dropped 20 points in about the time that it takes a subway train to rush from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

The I. R. T. case had been in court more than a year. Last year a Federal Court upheld the 7-c- fare but it was never put into effect (TIME, May 14). Last week's Supreme Court decision, although it overturned the first decision, left the case still open and in the hands of New York's Transit Commission for final decision. The commission, however, favors nickels.