This statement, of course, took cognizance of the rapid progress in America where, following the development of the air-cooled engine, the controllable-pitch propeller, the Boeing and Douglas transports, the Sikorsky boats, and Lindbergh’s epic flight, commercial aviation had flourished. These products now became Tom Hamilton’s stock in trade and he peddled them most successfully to independent customers whose decisions were dictated by economic considerations rather than those of national prestige.
When Tom visited Hartford, we often gathered at the close of a business day before the fireplace in our basement recreation room. Its walls were hung with Indian curios and colored prints of Indian warriors, while the corner posts of the fireplace nook boasted accurate replicas of Alaskan totem poles carved under Tom’s supervision and decorated by him. Both of us having been raised in the Pacific Northwest, at a time when pioneers still lived to recount tales of their many enterprises, we had absorbed some of their spirit.
The curious turn of events in England, where the most enterprising nation of modern times seemed to have fallen on evil days, came in for much discussion. Tom had accumulated a number of ideas while traveling abroad. For one thing, England, having acquired great wealth, seemed bent on holding onto it, preferably without having to work. Her desire for economic security reflected a human trait that accompanies maturity. Her government, always responsive to business influence, had gradually abandoned free trade in exchange for monopolies and cartels. Meanwhile business had exploited labor as a commodity, a fact disclosed by the character of her industrial cities. The High Street led upwind by way of wide avenues to cultivated gardens; the crooked lane to the workers’ cottages wound past bleak habitations blackened by factory smoke. Ultimately, labor in revolt had replaced the business monopoly with one of its own. Labor leaders, having acquired power, became its prisoners. Unless they wielded their power for the material benefit of the workers they represented, someone else would either force them to action or grab their jobs. In time these labor monopolists would feel the force of government in the form of a dictatorship or government monopoly. With the nationalization of industry, initiative and enterprise were sure to be stifled; all incentive would be lost. Tom had witnessed this in France without dreaming it could spread to England. With the vital spark extinguished, the body politic must decay. It always had. Yet while watching the creeping paralysis in England, Tom observed that certain nations continued to exercise their initiative.
In Holland, for instance, where the Dutch, though defeated by the English fleet, had gone on to expand ocean commerce to create an empire in the Indies, the perception of their statesmen and merchants had suffered no obscuration. As far back as October 7, 1918, a month before the Armistice, the Dutch had pioneered with what was to become the world-famous K.L.M. and K.N.I.L.M., outstanding services on the continent of Europe extending to the Dutch East and West Indies. The Scandinavian countries, which behind the sure shield of the Grand Fleet had expanded their sea power, now linked their homeland with the rest of the Continent and with London, and made plans for their forthcoming service to the Americas. In Norway, Bernt Balchen, the well-known explorer, tied the efforts in with American products; in Sweden, Aktiebolaget Aerotransport standardized on American aircraft like the Douglas DC-3.
Similarly, the Belgians, always an enterprising people, covered Europe and reached out for the Congo with their “Sabena.” In Italy, the tendency was to use domestic types like the Savoia-Marchettis, but the Italians purchased technical information and took licenses to build American products. In Poland, the Polish Airlines “LOT” operated an extensive service using American equipment. A Jugoslav service covered the capitals of Europe. Finland connected Helsinki with Berlin.
The Germans, after getting the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty lifted, moved rapidly to make up lost ground. Junkers began to manufacture its version of the Boeing 247, and Bavarian Motoren Werke, builders of one of the best in-line liquid-cooled engines extant, took a license to manufacture the Pratt and Whitney Hornet. Junkers took a license to manufacture the Hamilton-Standard propeller, but later abandoned it in favor of their own “V.D.M.” The German Lufthansa, equipped with aircraft derived from the American technologies, spread over Europe and reached out to the far comers of the world, like South America.
In France, which we now recognize as a casualty of World War I, the world’s strongest air force was dissipated by storing war surplus aircraft and neglecting a living industry. In fact, the French industry, suffering from subversive activities, declined to the point where the government could conveniently nationalize it and, to all intents and purposes, strangle it. French air transport suffered from the internal dissensions which were rife at the time, but Air France attempted to write its name in history with aircraft predominantly of American conception.
In England, even the Empire routes suffered in competition with American aircraft. Thus when Pan American was ready to initiate the Bermuda-Azores-Lisbon transatlantic service, with the new Sikorsky S-42 Clippers, the British delayed granting landing rights in Bermuda to Pan American until they could build a plane of their own, undertaken after Mr. Sikorsky had read a paper before the Royal Aeronautical Society outlining the novel features in his design and setting down its measured performance. During this delay, Pan American shifted its attention to the far Pacific and, using the same Sikorsky Clippers, pioneered the air route to Hawaii and the Orient.
The activity associated with the growth of world air transport provided Tom with just the opportunity he had foreseen. Furthermore, after the American air-mail contracts had been canceled and the American long-term program had broken down, the business Tom had brought to United enabled us to keep our heads above water. Revenue from the sale of technical information provided us with funds with which to keep in the forefront of technological progress. And though we did not realize it, that morning when Tom came home from Europe, his efforts would later provide the sustenance which would save Pratt and Whitney and its organization for a decisive contribution to the coming World War II. It was the war clouds from the cold front in Europe that depressed Tom’s buoyant spirit.
“This man Hitler,” he said, “is the world’s evil genius.” We were sitting in my office in East Hartford trying to plan our moves in a game of blind-man’s buff.