Flying the mail

Air Classics, Mar 2003 by Hulett, George

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For the early airlines, air mail was essential for survival

Visionary entrepreneurs are often credited with creating America's commercial airline industry, and federal airline regulation is assumed to have played no significant role until President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.

Airlines and Air Mail by F. Robert van der Linden (University Press of Kentucky, $35) reinterprets the growth of the airline industry, arguing that it was the Progressive Republican policies of Herbert Hoover that actually put commercial aviation on the map in the United States.

Led by Hoover's postmaster general, Walter Fogle Brown, the government promoted the combination of strong financial enterprises with substantial government guidance through economic incentives to develop commercial aviation in the public interest while avoiding the problems experienced earlier during the development of the railroads. Through the use of air mail contracts, the federal government provided a critical indirect subsidy and a solid economic foundation for this nascent industry.

Postmaster General Brown, directing the expansion of a rational network of airlines flying along well-defined routes, used these air mail contracts as a carrot and a stick to ensure the survival of the pioneering companies.

While his vision often conflicted with that of Congress and with that of the small airline operator, Brown was responsible for building the vast air transport network that exists today.

In 1934, Senate investigations of the aviation oligopolies prompted Roosevelt to suspend the air mail contracts. Ultimately, Roosevelt was forced to return the contracts to the large airlines.

Even though the New Nationalism of Progressive Republicans that favored efficient large enterprises was replaced by the New Freedom of the Progressive Democrats that abhorred trusts, the results were essentially the same. Congress abolished the aviation holding companies, but the same financially strong airlines favored by Hoover and Brown continued their dominance under federal regulatory protection.