Congressional procedures sometimes seem slow and unwieldy but the lawmakers demonstrated they can act efficiently and with dispatch in a crisis when they passed emergency legislation to impose a railroad strike settlement. As a result, freight and passenger trains are rolling again after a four-day strike of 26,000 locomotive engineers that paralyzed rail transportation. The walkout–over an issue clearly unworthy of the national inconvenience and disruption it caused-would have resulted in tremendous economic losses had it been allowed to run its course. Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis estimated a prolonged tieup would have cost the economy $1 billion a day and idled nearly a million workers within a month in addition to more than 400,000 rail employees. To their credit, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers responded quickly to the action of Congress and President Reagan. The President, who declared the emergency bill “vital to national interest,” signed it promptly. The measure imposed on the brotherhood the same settlement accepted by other rail unions–about ll percent more pay over 39 months, plus cost-of-living adjustments–including a moratorium on strikes until the contract termination June 30,1904. The engineers wanted the right to strike to back up demands that they continue to be paid more than other train crew members. Engineers now average $37,000. according to press accounts. Conductors are the next highest paid crew members at $32,000. There were fears that had the government not stepped in, the agreements with other rail unions might have unraveled, which would have been serious indeed. This was the first time Congress had imposed a rail strike settlement since Gctober 1973 when members of the United Transportation Union were ordered back to work on the old Penn Central road. Reagan and many members of Congress expressed themselves as preferring to keep government out of the collective bargaining process. The Herald agrees as a general rule but commends the lawmakers and the President for keeping values in perspective and acting accordingly in the recent emergency. A national railroad strike is a crisis any time; coming in a period of depressed economy and already-heavy unemployment, an extended tieup could inflict devastating consequences. The government-decreed termination of the strike definitely was in the public interest.