The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1919-03-28

chine for bomb work can carry from five to six
tons. There Is another machine for ocean work
that can carry eleven tons. Average the mail car
rlers or fast express planes at eight tons capacity.
Eight tons are 10000 pounds, and a rate of %
cents a pound would give a daily revenue between
chicago and New York of $4,000. Now the gov
eminent is not talking % cents q pound. 1t is
talking or from 10 to 16 cents an ounce. You can
ugure the revenue on that basis yourself.
Or take the passenger rate from Paris to Lon
don, $50. Suppose we have a passenger service
from New York to Florida at 500. There Is a
machine capable Of carrying fifty passengers from
New York TO Florida. That would be a revenue of
$4,000.
But the cost of the machine and pilots? The
little machines require only one pilot, the big ones
two. Pilots can be hired for from 500 to $500 a
month, especially If they are permitted to retain
their present military or naval status. The gaso-
line VIII not run at more than 81 gallons an hour,
at not less than II gallons per engine per hour.
Or the machine cost, we have only war figures
now, with wages and material at war levels: but
after the war, men like Curtiss and Wright believe
the machines with military equipment now run
ming from $500 to $4,000 can be produced for
industrial purposes at from $500 to $4,000. Now,
l don't know Of many locomotives and trains or
steamships that can cover all the way from one.
third their cost to all their cost in the revenue Of
one trip. That is, / don't know of methods of
transportation that can do sd when freigEts are
not at war levels.
After those figures, l don't know how the prac-
teal man feels, but l do know the airplane manu-
facturers are thankful to heaven the war is over
so that they can put the airplane on as sound a
commercial basis as any other industry.
But before the airplane can be as generally
adopted for industrial uses as the motorcar, lust
as much will have TO be done. Everybody knows.
or should know, that the motor was the inspiration
Of the good roads propaganda, which has run over
the country like wildfire for ten years. Thousands,
hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on
the good roads propaganda till ii became a ma
tional slogan. Then millions were spent on the
good roads themselves; and they have paid back
compound interest on every dollar.
roads for the airplane through the air? Yes; that
Is exactly what | mean, only they won't be roads.
and you won't have TO spend any millions on
either the propaganda or the roads themselves.
1t will be a strictly and entirely government lob.
Only instead Of roads, it will be charts you will
have to lay out; and they don't need rails, road
bed, grading, political graft.
More Anxious Over the Land.
The airplane man is far more anxious about air
over the land than air over the sea. Over the sea.
if he does come down, all he will hit Is water. On
The land, If he comes down without q proper land.
ing place. something as small as q stray cat. a
fence post, a telephone wire, q two-foot ditch, a
rain-sodden COW path, or q dry desert arroyo might
wreck his machine.