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Ever since the passage of the McNary-Watres Act (1930) there has been a covert airmail "scandal" in Washington. That law changed the method of government payments to airmail contractors. More important, it severely circumscribed open bidding by operators for airmail contracts, by giving the Postmaster General huge authority to extend existing routes as he saw fit. Postmaster General Brown limited bidding to companies which had six months' experience in night flying. He called that "protecting the equities of the pioneer operator," but its effect was to sew up the airmail map for big companies which received thousands of miles in route extensions, through territory which hopeful small fry had been flying for months. "General" Brown, No. 1 politico of the Hoover Administration, openly advocating monopoly, helped to concentrate the airmail system into the mighty hands of the so-called "aviation trust," United Air Lines, American Airways and the North American Aviation group (Eastern Air, Western Air and T. A. T.). Unlucky independents fumed, raged, threatened and gradually died off or were swallowed up. In Republican Congress after Congress Democrats launched airmail investigations but. with "General" Brown solidly in office, they resulted in nothing more than impotent yelps of protest. Last week a Democratic Senate, with backing of a Democratic Administration, first turned its attention to airmail matters. Investigation was started by the special committee headed by Alabama's smart little Hugo LaFayette Black who had rooted out a mess of unsavory facts about ocean mail contracts. What made this inquiry different from the others, what put it on the front pages of the Press was the political fact that at last the Democrats had the power and the will to do something about the "dirt" turned up against Republican jobholders. For once the independent operators had a sympathetic audience for a recital of their familiar grievances. Typical testimony: ¶"General" Brown, his Assistant Warren Irving Glover, Colonel Paul Henderson of United Air Lines and Mabel Walker Willebrandt, then Washington lobbyist for American Airways, helped draw up the McNary-Watres bill and insert its monopolistic provision. ¶In two years the Postmaster General gave American Airways 4,415 mi. of route extensions largely in the Southwest, 2,516 mi. to the North American group, all without competitive bidding. Colonel Henderson, whose United system was not in line for such extensions, testified: "This seemed so contrary to the spirit of the law . . . that I took it as a joke at first, but discovered it to be a serious plan." ¶Thomas H. McKee, representing the Wedell-Williams Line, an independent service operated out of New Orleans by famed Pilot "Jimmy" Wedell & Backer Harry P. Williams, related his efforts to get a contract. After repeated rebuffs he caught wind of a meeting of airline operators at the Post Office Building, and "crashed the gate." Before he was ousted, he found a roomful of men under authority to draw up an airmail map. American Airways later got the mail contract for the route flown by Wedell-Williams. ¶Erie P. Halliburton, operator of defunct Southwest Air Fast Express ("SAFEWAY" lines), said he and William Gibbs McAdoo persistently bid to carry the mail for $3.67