National Affairs: Plan for CAA

Last week Mr. Roosevelt suddenly looked up from World War II. For the first time in many months, he was concerned enough to be angry about a domestic matter. His jaw jutted up & out. His voice rang with its old, terrible certainty that he was right and a great many other people were wrong. He announced that ignorance, gullibility or politics moved those who differed with him on the matter at hand. He repeated: ignorance, gullibility, politics. He said that he was being frightfully polite when he called some of his opponents “well-intentioned people.” Cold fire was in his eyes, blazing across the sheets of a prepared statement which he read to White House correspondents:

“Since the transmittal [to Congress] of Reorganization Plans Nos. III and IV, a flood of misinformation has engulfed those sections dealing with the Civil Aeronautics Authority. . . . This morning . . . we saw a group of well-intentioned people staking out an exclusive claim to a so-called ‘Lobby to Save Lives.’ The implication that we are not interested in saving lives . . . compels me to restate in simple terms the basic features of the Reorganization Plans. . . .”

In terms too simple for complete accuracy, Mr. Roosevelt then summarized his proposals to make independent CAA an adjunct of the Commerce Department, abolish CAA’s Air Safety Board, otherwise revise its setup. The people who incurred the President’s frightful politeness were eleven airline pilots. Organizer of their Washington “Lobby to Save Lives” was former United Air Lines Pilot Captain David Louis Behncke, president of Air Line Pilots’ Association. Said Captain Behncke, politely replying to Mr. Roosevelt: “The pilots … are not schooled in politics. They are schooled in flying and know what is necessary to make air transportation safe. They learned about this the hard way. One hundred and forty-six of their number met death in air crashes while the Department of Commerce had control of civil flying and air transportation. . . .”

Under CAA rule U. S. airlines recently completed their first twelve months without a fatal crash.

The arguments for making CAA once more a part of the Department of Commerce are chiefly that: 1) it will get rid of one more independent bureau; 2) the Department of Commerce is different now —Uncle Danny Roper is gone and the Under Secretary of Commerce is able Edward John Noble, CAA’s first chairman; 3) CAA’s own internal checks and balances have resulted in continual quarrels and minor complaints vexing to the President. To make the Department of Commerce seem more attractive, the President last week announced that he expected to appoint CAA’s present head, Robert Henry Hinckley, an Assistant Secretary of Commerce.

Last week Missouri’s Congressman John J. Cochran significantly took the attitude that there is much to be said on both sides. He told the President not to count too much on Congressional support for CAA Reorganization. He asked the press: “Don’t you know that man [the President] is interested in safety, when he knows that some member of his family is traveling in an airplane every day?”