(2 of 3)
The new law set up an air authority of five members and an administrator at annual salaries of $12,000, and an air safety board of three at $7,500 annually, one of them to be an airline pilot. To the authority was entrusted control over mail subsidies, with authority to fix rates, determine routes on request and recommendation from the Post Office Department and designate carriers. The authority was also to set maximum passenger and freight rates as the I.C.C. does for rail and bus carriers, and enfranchise existing airlines with certificates of convenience and necessity, continuing all present mail contracts during good airline behavior.
To prevent a recurrence of the situation that brought about the 1934 Black inquiry, when the Errett Cord interests half-cornered the airmail subsidy of $16.500.000, holding 13 of 26 contracts through mergers and consolidations, the Act forbids mergers, interlocked directorates and subleasing of carrier contracts without consent of the authority.
While everybody in the air transport business knew that the new act was far better for all concerned than anything previously devised for air industry control, they knew, too. in the words of Eastern Airlines' plain-talking War Ace Eddie Rickenbacker, that "the McCarran-Lea act will be only as good as the men who comprise the board."
Announced as chairman of the new Aeronautical Authority last week was no politician, no airline executive, no prominent kibitzer from the aeronautical sidelines. He was the man who makes candy Life Savers, 55-year-old Edward John Noble. An eminently successful business man, a flying enthusiast for ten years, a man with undeniable poise and organizational ability, tested in business and in the Wartime U. S. Army, he represented what the air industry has cried loudest for. An upstate New Yorker and a Republican, Edward John Noble worked for a time as a reporter on the Watertown Daily Times, became the best treasurer the Gouverneur Athenian Society ever had, then packed himself off to Yale. Broke when he entered, he organized and ran an eating club, marked himself as likely to succeed by being graduated (1905) with a financial surplus. He started making Life Savers 25 years ago in a one-room loft in Manhattan, stirring the peppermint flavor into the mixture himself.
As the Authority's administrator, Franklin Roosevelt appointed friendly, hard-working Career Man Clinton M. Hester, counsel to the Treasury Department and a frequent advocate of the Act during Congressional hearings. Born 43 years ago in Des Moines, Iowa, he has spent 20 years in Federal service, studying law at Georgetown while a Government clerk. His new job: to execute the Authority's orders.