This is a PDF file of the records of the Cabinet meeting of March 28, 1958 and its results. The 33-page PDF contains copies of the following documents:

  • Cabinet Paper 58-77 dated March 25, 1958, “Recommendations Concerning Railroads – Report of the Transportation Study Group” and a cover memo to Cabinet members from the Cabinet Secretary (10 pages). (Note: The drawings on the pages were made by someone at the Cabinet meeting, possibly by Eisenhower himself, who was known to doodle on meeting papers and because this was numbered copy #1 of the Cabinet paper, which presumably would go to POTUS.)
  • The official Minutes of the Cabinet meeting, summarizing the broad strokes of the discussion (3 pages).
  • The official Record of Action of the Cabinet meeting, including paragraph-by-paragraph changes in the Cabinet Paper (3 pages).
  • A White House press release dated April 22, 1958 releasing a letter from President Eisenhower to Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks endorsing a letter he had proposed to send to the Senate outlining the policy conclusions adopted by the Cabinet as Administration policy (1 page).
  • A letter from Sec. Weeks to Eisenhower dated April 21, 1958 asking for Presidential approval of the letter to the Senate (1 page).
  • Sec. Weeks’s letter to the chairman of the Senate Surface Transportation Subcommittee, restating Cabinet Paper 58-77 plus the changes ordered by the Cabinet (15 pages).

The Weeks letter outlining Eisenhower Administration railroad policy was submitted for the record after the end of the ongoing Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce hearings (at the very end of their epic 1958 “Problems of the Railroads” hearings on page 2348) and helped shape what became the Transportation Act of 1958 (P.L. 85-625).

Original documents in the folder “Cabinet Meeting of March 28, 1958” in Box 14 of the Ann Whitman File – Cabinet Series in the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.