Last time Franklin Delano Roosevelt stuck his oar into the affairs of U. S. commercial aviation he made a superb mess of it. Aroused by Senator Hugo Black's airmail contract investigation, the President precipitately directed cancellation of all airmail contracts (TIME, Feb. 39, 1934, et seq.). The Army was ordered to fly the mail, which it proceeded to do with a loss of twelve lives in eleven weeks. Months later, when the airlines finally got all their mail subsidy back, it was under the supervision of a newly constituted Air Mail Bureau of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and in the form of one-year contracts under which the carriers were never certain where their next meal ticket was coming from.
But strangely enough, if Franklin Roosevelt had last week ventured to ad dress Friends," the he would aviation have been industry as sure of a "My jabber of cheery answering echoes. For, after putting the finishing touches on the ultimate reform to grow out of the 1934 unpleasantness, he had brought into being a Civil Aeronautics Authority independent of all other branches of the Government except the White House itself, headed by a business man, peopled with non-political experts, and charged with "encouragement and development of an air-transportation system properly adapted to the present and future needs of the foreign and domestic commerce of the U. S.. of the defense." Postal Service, Regulations and were of to the be framed national "in such a manner as to assure the highest degree of safety . . . foster sound economic conditions . . . without unjust discriminations, undue preferences ... or unfair or destructive competitive practices."
Out of the Black inquiry came the first serious move to centralize regulation of aviation. Silvery Nevadan Pat McCarran wrote a Senate bill to place full control of the industry with the I.C.C. Year later, in the House, California's Clarence Lea offered a bill to create an independent Government bureau for aviation. Until the last Congress, neither bill had been able to make much headway. Both the Post Office Department and the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Air Commerce stood to lose firm political footholds if the centralization move succeeded. But this year the proposals were revived, promptly got mixed up in the Reorganization squabble. Pat McCarran had designed his bill to keep aviation well out of White House reach. Representative Lea's, more to Administration liking, sought to centralize control in the executive branch of the Government. Chief Administration argument was that since aviation is so closely related to national defense, its control ought to be centred where the President and his State, War and Navy Departments could keep an eye on it. Both bills were passed, and from joint committee conferences the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 emerged with most of the Administration-backed features retained. But one last safeguard against complete White House domination of the authority had been stamped on the final draft by Pat McCarran. No member of the authority except its administrator may be dismissed except for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.