Aeronautics: Army Takes Over

Into the vacuum created by the Government’s cancellation of all its airmail contracts flew the U. S. Army last week. Not for a decade had the military hauled the mails in its fighting planes. But now President Roosevelt had declared an “emergency”‘ as the result of Postmaster General Farley’s sudden discovery of what he thought was “fraud and collusion” in the awarding of airmail contracts to private operators by his predecessor, Republican Walter Folger Brown.

The Army took to its new job like a hawk to the air. Its enthusiasm, however, did not relieve the anxiety of oldtime operators for the safety of young military pilots. Few of the Army men had had much bad-weather flying — an essential for regular mail transportation. Fewer still knew the perilous mountain routes they must follow through the thickest night without two-way radio. Even before the Army officially took over, the ousted operators were getting confirmations of their worst fears.

In mail test flights, two Army planes had forced landings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Three days later a reserve officer called to postal duty was ferrying a Douglas bomber to the Army’s western airmail base. He got lost in the Idaho badlands, crashed and burned to death near Jerome. Same day two more reserve pilots were delivering a plane to the western base when they ran into a blizzard near Salt Lake City. Ice coated the ship, bore it down out of control. So inaccessible was the spot in which they died that the pilots’ bodies had to be brought away in a sleigh.

These inauspicious accidents did not daunt the 200 officers and 324 enlisted men who had been sworn in on their tarmacs for duty with the Post Office Department. The mail did go through, in 148 ships whose machine guns and bomb-racks had been yanked out so they could carry letter sacks in their bellies. To begin with, the Army dropped 16,000 of the 27,000 route miles previously privately flown. Some feeder services were abandoned: Twin Cities-Chicago, Los Angeles-Portland, New Orleans-Chicago, Buffalo-New York. On the New York-San Francisco run, the Army maintained one day service with a slightly later morning delivery. In many cases private fields had been turned over to the Army by the operators whose contracts had been canceled. Where this was not done, emergency landing fields of the Department of Commerce and military fields were used.

Meanwhile the country continued to debate the rights & wrongs of the President’s precipitate action on airmail contracts. What his friends had the hardest time explaining away was his wholesale conviction of all airlines without giving any of them a hearing. His motives might have been of the best. He may have been trying to inject a high sense of morals into Government contracts. But his methods found few informed advocates. Many a citizen was content to believe that his President could do no wrong, but there were plenty of others who suspected that his action and his failure to explain it to the country were part of a general Administrative attempt to blacken the preceding Republican Administration and thereby make political ammunition for the November elections.

Was It Legal? Belatedly, Postmaster General Farley went to bat in an attempt to justify the Administration’s action. In his opinion, only modest National Parks Airways (Salt Lake City-Great Falls, Mont.) was entitled to have its contract reviewed, with the possibility of reinstatement. “General” Farley was convinced that there was “illegality”‘ in Postmaster General Brown’s handling of airmail contracts, although, as yet, he had no basis for “criminal action.” Some Farley charges:

1) It was illegal for the Post Office Department to extend old airmail contracts, tide over potent contractors until the Watres Act could be passed in April 1930. 2) It was illegal to award big route extensions without competitive bidding. 3) It was illegal to permit collusion among the hand-picked operators who met at the Post Office Department in May— June 1930, agreed among themselves what routes they would and would not bid for.

Viewing with displeasure the fact that of the 26 domestic airmail contracts awarded by Postmaster Brown’s administration, 24 fell into the hands of Aviation Corp. (13), United Aircraft (6), North American (5), Mr. Farley declared: “At the time of the passage of the Watres Act in 1930 there were many reasonably well-established air transport passenger lines desirous of obtaining airmail contracts which received no consideration whatsoever.” He further charged that of the $78,000,000 given in 1930-33 to airmail carriers, $46,800,000 had been paid in excess, since the subsidy was based on wasteful space rates instead of on poundage.

Rebuttal. Against the Farley indictment could be set up the following facts:

1) The Kelly law of 1928 gave the Postmaster General authority to “extend” mail contracts, was in no way superseded by the Watres Act. No one save Postmaster General Farley thought Mr. Brown had violated the letter or spirit of the Watres Act by his geographical extensions, for which the bill makes full provisions.

2) The Post Office conferences in May-June 1930 on airmail contracts were no secret. The Post Office Department had even put out a press release on them. No evidence had yet been adduced that Mr. Brown was informed of the inter-company deals leading up to a redistribution of contracts.

3) As to the legality of contracts, all had been approved by that jealous guardian of the national purse, Comptroller General McCarl.

4) From 1929 to 1933 compensation paid to airmail carriers by the Post Office Department was reduced from $1.09 to 42¢ per mile.

5) If Mr. Brown did attempt to reduce ruthless competition among airlines, he was doing no more than the present Administration is trying to do under the NRA.

Was It Moral? Friends of the Administration tried to justify its action on the ground of morality. Republicans, it was argued, always favored industry and big business as a fundamental theory of government. The airlines had waxed fat on subsidies and insiders had made millions from stock deals. President Roosevelt was only trying to purge an industry that had been too long at the Treasury trough. Such was the note struck by Senator Black last week in a radio speech:

“The Americans who still cling to the ancient facts in honesty take heart! This Administration not only speaks to you about justice. It dares to defy the power of concentrated wealth and privilege to secure it. In your name it tells the beneficiary of fraud to surrender his booty!”

To such Democratic talk the Republican answer might well have been that the $78,000,000 spent in three years on airmail was small potatoes to the hundreds of millions the present Administration has doled out to cotton and wheat farmers as a direct subsidy. If Mr. Brown was morally in error, so was the historic policy of the U. S. toward all new or weak transportation systems.

Smokeout. Major result of the cross-fire of accusation and denial was that smart little Hugo LaFayette Black’s Senate investigating committee at last got onetime Postmaster General Brown to testify before it, no holds barred. Less than a week after he had written his fellow Ohioan, Senator Simeon D. Fess, that he would face the committee “at the earliest date convenient” and that “anything I may say may be used against me in any court in the land,” Walter Brown walked into the committee’s hearing room in the Senate Office Building.

Senator Black was delighted that Mr. Brown had at last been smoked out. but during the opening session he could get little out of Witness Brown except the stubborn declaration that “there was nothing clandestine or secret” about the operators’ conferences. Mr. Brown freely admitted his conviction that the Watres Act should have been framed to eliminate competitive bidding. Said he: “We don’t put mail on railroads by competitive bidding.” But Senator Black sparred vainly for an admission that Postmaster General Brown had let his convictions lead him into violation of the act as passed.