Giant Airline

In the Drake Hotel, Chicago, 35 of the nation's most famed business men held, last week, a secret conference. They had come in private cars from the four corners of the country, and they organized in a few hours the largest air transport project in the world. The company was capitalized at $10,000,000, and $2,000,000 was at once subscribed--enough to start immediate operation of a New York-Chicago overnight route. The list of officers and directors of the National Air Transport Corporation is imposing. President is Howard E. Coffin of Detroit, whose reputation was made as an executive of the Hudson Motor Car Co. Probable Chairman of the Board is Harold H. Emmons, automotive man of equal standing and one of the fathers of the Liberty motor. Clement M. Keys, President of the famed Curtiss Airplane Co., is to be Chairman of the Executive Committee. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Henderson (TIME, Nov. 3), in charge of the U. S. Air Mail, is to resign after July 1 and become General Operations Manager. The directorate includes such men as Marshall Field III of Chicago, Stuyvesant Fish of Manhattan, William A. Rockefeller (grandson of the late brother of John Davison Rockefeller), P. K. Wrigley (son of the chewing-gum man). The great strength of the project lies in the fact that no stock is to be sold publicly: "the promoters regard the project as partly a business venture, partly a national development which will help place the U. S. in the very forefront of aviation and pave the way to a network of routes covering the entire country." Plans have been very carefully made. The strong interest and friendship of the American Express Co. ensures express matter in large quantities--at $2 a lb., according to Chairman Keys. The U. S. Air Mail's night line between Manhattan and Chicago spells something far better than a subsidy: namely, the use of beacons, landing fields and landing lights at nominal figures. Further, there is every prospect that, as soon as the company has demonstrated its dependability, it will carry the air mail under contract. Postmaster General New is only too anxious to see his department relieved of a responsibility which, like the transportation of railway mail, rests properly with private operators.