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Government Control. No one yet knows if passenger, freight and mail air rates are fair to both the public and the operator. To get a detached opinion and a disinterested rate schedule President Erie C. Halliburton of Southwest Air Fast Express resolved that the Interstate Commerce Commission or a comparable body prepare a schedule for the industry. Retiring Assistant Secretary of Commerce William Patterson MacCracken and President John F. O'Ryan of Colonial Airways System opposed putting the aviation business under Government control. Mr. MacCracken's effective point was that the Government did not assume control of the railroads until 35 years after they were in general operation.* The traffic conference did nothing about Mr. Halliburton's resolution. Conferees also ignored Mr. MacCracken's resolution that a single conference committee study the whole rate matter. If there is to be any industrial regulating (on rates and other aspects), the industry wants to do it itself. Hence eleven committees were appointed and assigned to study the many matters which are in confusion.
A corollary of Mr. Halliburton's idea of voluntarily submitting to Government control found adherents among the air men. Inevitably, they realized, there will be a Federal regulating commission. The industry's early willingness to submit would give it a "good face" in public opinion.
That prescience of inevitability was real. Last week in the Senate, Senator Bratton of New Mexico, where the first transcontinental transport crash occurred three weeks ago (TIME, Sept. 16), proposed that the Senate's Interstate Commerce Committee study the question of Governmental air-industry regulation. His committee, he knew, would approve such regulation. Air-minded Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut at once declared that "the Bratton resolution is merely a crack at Assistant Secretary of Commerce MacCracken. But MacCracken has done his job extremely well. He has built up a fine organization of trained engineers and pilots which makes a study of every airplane accident and already has done much to eliminate them." Senator Bingham wanted Senator Bratton's resolution referred to the Senate's Commerce Committee which, he knew, would pigeonhole it, thereby keeping "as is" the government's supervision of aviation, under the Department of Commerce. The Senate had so much to do squabbling and dickering over the Tariff (see p. 14) that it did nothing to the Bratton resolution.
Baggage. Air carriers dislike excess baggage. They want to restrict free baggage to 25 or 30 lbs. per person on single-motored planes, and to 50 Ibs. on multi-motored ones. High rates for excess baggage would make passengers limit their dunnage.*
*The I.C.C. was created in 1887.
*Mrs. Charles Augustus Lindbergh generally travels with only one evening gown and no extra wrap. Just after a recent landing Col. Lindbergh scolded her lor not wearing a petticoat.