The Board of Governors of the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America, in order to “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” and in order to ensure that the airplane which America created shall be used to maintain peace and secure the blessings of peace to mankind, does unanimously recommend the early formulation of an American Air Power Policy under the following guiding principles:
And the essence of these principles was summarized toward the end of the pamphlet in this paragraph.
The public character of aviation imposes upon it a dual role. Commercial companies, to advance their private interests and stimulate technical progress, must compete in the realm of operations. At the same time, they must collaborate in the realm of policy to promote the public interest.
We had naturally expected that when this document was released to the aviation press it would create something of a stir, but in this we were disappointed. After this warning that the idea would need to be sold, even to aviation writers, we began to appreciate the fact that we had a job on our hands. Through Deac Lyman, an old New York Times reporter, we were invited to lunch with Arthur Sulzberger and his editors in the executive dining room of the Times Building, where we briefed our situation. The Times, always alert to aviation matters, subsequently covered aviation news and handled aviation editorials against the background of the policy. The magazine Aviation, whose editor, Leslie Neville, was author of numerous books on aviation, caught the new spirit and developed the theme. Soon all the members of the Aviation Writers’ Association took a hand in developing the broad background of air power as a trinity of commerce, industry, and security.
Subsequent events proved that we had acted none too early. Within a matter of weeks, we were haled before a Congressional investigating committee, the War Contracts Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Toward Public Inquiry
Having developed a certain gun shyness before such Congressional inquiries as the Nye inquisition and the air-mail investigation conducted by Senator Hugo Black, now Mr. Justice Black of the United States Supreme Court, we air craftsmen might have shied away from Senator Murray save for a bit of sage advice given me by Mr. Sam Rayburn, then Speaker of the House. When I called on him for counsel as to how we should proceed with our air-power program, the Speaker offered it as his opinion that we should avoid lobbying as we would a plague. All trade associations were suspect; they usually devoted their energies to the search for special advantage for their clients. And the munitions business was condemned out of hand. Besides, that was the wrong way under any circumstances. Congressmen, the Speaker assured me, were just average people, no wiser, no dumber than anyone else. But there was one thing a Congressman had to understand if he wanted to stay in politics, and that was the will of the people. He thought we had a good case for public approval in our air policy, and he advised following Jim Forrestal’s advice and taking it direct to them.
He thought one of the best ways to get our story to the public was to appear at the public hearings held by Congressional committees. These, according to the Speaker, were good sounding boards from which to beam your point of view. Besides, you might actually influence a committee if you had an especially strong case. But it was a mistake to send lawyers or staff members of an association to these hearings. The company presidents should appear themselves; they were more convincing, and Congressmen liked to look them over. They respected men who had won their spurs in competition, especially if they also knew how to stand up and speak their pieces.
“Don’t send a boy,” the Speaker concluded, “to do a man’s work.”
By the middle of 1944, with the outcome of the war no longer in doubt, men began worrying about postwar and the inevitable letdown of peace. Nation-wide unemployment was taken for granted, and what to do about it became a live political issue. The aircraft industry, now one of the largest industries in the history of the world and one wholly dependent upon an inflated demand for war materials, seemed headed for the biggest bust imaginable.