Big v. Little

The chief executives of every big airmail operator in the U. S. met in an Atlantic City hotel room one day last fortnight. When they emerged, the Pioneer Transport Operators' Association had been formed, with membership limited to present holders of mail contracts. As in the case of the Association of Railway Executives, which is supposed to mould the policies of the rail industry, only the No. 1 man of each member company may represent it in the association.* Purpose of the organization was vaguely stated; something about "cooperation ... on matters pertaining to more efficient operation and service." But two obvious reasons for organizing offered themselves: 1) to prepare against threatened attacks upon airmail contracts when Congress convenes; 2) to agree on some attitude toward the proposal that airlines be supervised by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

To head the Pioneers, Harry Ellis Collins resigned his position as executive representative of Curtiss-Wright Corp. on the Pacific Coast and flew last week to Manhattan. Mr. Collins' appointment, sponsored by Curtiss-Wright's potent Chairman of the Executive Committee Clement Melville Keys, was somewhat puzzling to many observers because he is not widely known in the industry, and his experience has not been specially concerned with airmail. He served in the Navy from 1905 to 1929 (chiefly with the bureau of supply & contracts), resigned to go to California for Curtiss-Wright. There he was in charge of the C.W. airports at Glendale, Alameda and San Mateo, and of two flying service bases. Also for a year he was vice president of Maddux Air Lines until it was taken over by T. A. T.

Organization of the Pioneers may have been hastened by the growing clamor of the "independent" airlines--small ones, for the most part, with no mail contracts --for an investigation of Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown's method of awarding contracts to the big companies. The Watres airmail bill, under which contracts are awarded, was frankly designed to "protect the equities of the pioneer operator," a phrase which the independents see interpreted as "them as has, gets." Particularly enraged are they over the practice of granting to a big airmail operator an extension of his contract into territory where a smaller passenger line has been operating in hope of getting the mail some day. A case in point: Robertson Air Lines operates between St. Louis and New Orleans, but the mail was given to American Airways last June as an extension of its Chicago-St. Louis route.

The "independents" organized several months ago, met again recently in Oklahoma City reputedly with the counsel of Senator James A. Reed. Their spokesman in Washington is Pennsylvania's monklike Representative Clyde Kelly.

*No. 1 men: Philip Johnson of United Air Lines; Frederic Gallup Coburn of American Airways; Clement Melville Keys of Transcontinental & Western; Harris Hanshue of Western Air Express; Capt. Thomas B. Doe of Eastern Air Transport; Edwin G. Thompson of Transamerica Airlines Corp.; Col. L. H. Brittin of Northwest Airways; Alfred Frank of National Parks Airways.

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