The Pittsburgh Press (September 24, 1946)
Ruark: Cat fight
By Robert C. Ruark
NEW YORK – Just as in an argument between ladies, which begins with cutting asides and winds up in a clawing fracas on the floor, the airlines and the railroads are working themselves into a fine pet.
It’s at the cat stage right now. The railroads are saying: “Love your hat, Darling, it’s so right for your type.” And the airlines answer: “What a beautiful dress, Dear – your mother’s?” Unless somebody pulls the critters apart, they are a cinch to start scratching and kicking shins.
The railroads seem to feel that they are an-about-to-be-discarded wife, making place for a blond young hussy in the affections of the public. They are taking it hard, and are retaliating, through their institutional advertising.
Any day now I expect to see a full-page proclamation which says, after the juvenile fashion: “My mommy is prettier than your mommy.”
When the auto-traveler was a menace to the railways, the railroad people started this business of needling the opposition. They stuck feminine little billboards all over the country, close to highways.
“Next time,” they said, “take the train.” War took care of the auto tourist, but it also bred a new competition, the air-wise and air-confident traveler.
Fighting words from the airlines
And the airlines people and the airplane makers used the same technique. They asked: Why waste our life in travel time? Why get cinders in your eye? Plane travel is no more expensive than first-class rail fare plus Pullman – and what’s more, Mister, you can make it on the same shave, they said.
Growing a touch nasty, the plane people stuck in a powerful aside.
“Actually,” they said in a loud whisper, “it’s cheaper. No tips. Free meals aloft. No shooting your wad on clubcar booze. Don’t be a sucker. Fly, and get where you’re going before you’re too old to enjoy it.”
While the airlines are showing you full color photos, such as Boeing’s recent ad entitled, “Country Club Comfort,” which leads you to believe that airplanes are as big as Grand Central and lusher than the sultan’s palace, the railroads are kicking back in kind.
“Go on and fly, Chump,” they say in effect. “Go on and take to the air, and they’ll pick you out of a peak somewhere.” Pullman, being a lady of the old school, doesn’t say it in quite that way.
‘So safe, so fast – no worry’
Pullman shows you a picture of a happy housewife, picking the roses or bathing the dishes and chatting happily with a chum. “I never worry when John is traveling by Pullman,” she says, approximately. “It’s so safe – and fast, too.”
Then there is a picture of old John, snoring his silly head off, while a porter beams in the background. You know and I know that John got bleary drunk in the clubcar and lost a week’s pay playing gin, but do you think Pullman would admit it?
“Safety!” reads a recent crack at the airlines. “No worry about weather, roads or mountains in an all-steel Pullman car. You get there – on the DEPENDABLE schedules…”
Breathing brimstone, the SP says railroaders are sick and tired of being pushed around, and that the airliners have been misrepresenting themselves something fierce.
Ladylike, neither airline nor railroad mentions their own shortcomings, but read heavy on the virtues. The real brawl is about to boil, with the air full of screams, mussed-hair, and curved fingers. Ladies, Ladies, please!