The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-07-09


boy. Everybody wants to get int,
! the business.
That raises the questions of wht
is to own these airlines of the flu
ture, how will their development b
! financed, to what extent will thi:
air age expansion be controlled il
! the public interest? Here the fed
eral government steps into TIT
picture, with a traditional policy
built up during the last 80 years
by various acts of Congress speci-
flying that one form of transporta
ton shall not be controlled by an
other.
Specifically railroads shall not
control waterways nor motor bus
and truck lines, and none of these
shall control air transportation
lines. But over this issue impends
a bitter postwar battle for big
business control.
EVERYBODY'S AIR-MINDED
Evidence of this struggle can now
be observed in the applications on
file with the Civil Aeronautics Board
which regulates air transport, and
in the pressure eXerted to have the
civil aeronautics act of 1888 amended
so as to relax some of the restric-
tons now in force. Also, the De-
partment of Justice has stepped
into the picture through the filing
with CAB of petitions for leave to
intervene in the cases of five appli-
cations from surface carriers who
want to get into air transportation
The companies affected are the
Greyhound corporation now oper-
ating bus lines, the Kansas City
Southern Railway, the Pan-Atlantic
Steamship company, the Keshin
Freight Lines and Universal Air
Freight, operating bus lines, ware
houses and freight forwarding serv-
ices.
At first glance it would seem that
applications from truck, bus, rail-
way and steamship lines such as
these, wanting to get into the air
transport business, were healthy
manifestations of potntial post
war business development. Here are
established and successful compa-
MES, with ample capital, facilities,
operating brains and know-hoW,
wanting to broaden out in the air
age. They can hire Army pilots and
buy Army cargo planes after the
war, and away they go.
But the traditional policy of
the federal government, built up
through administrations of both
political parties, would seem to run
counter to any such development.
This policy may be expressed briefly
as a doctrine that where an older
form of transportation tries to
dominate another, newer form of
transportation, the older tends not
to develop the newer, but to throttle
it, control it, remove it as source
of competition to the facilities in
which it has already invested its
larger capital and has its greatest
interest.
AIRLINES OPPOSE
OUTSIDE CONTROL
In so far as control of an airline
by another form of transportation
is concerned, there is precedent for
this policy in the CAB
ruling against the application of
Aemrican EXporte Lines, a steamship
prohibiting it from oper-
ating and controlling as a subsidiary
The American Export Airlines.
Practically all existing CONNER
,ial airlines, it is believed, are IN
support of this policy. They want
airline development continued as a
separate business, free from the in
;erest, domination or control by
'ailroad, steamship, or motor car
Ter capital. And they believe that
or the postwar period, there will
,e ample private capital to finance
every conceivable expansion.
Existing law and the policy OF the
,ederal government administrative
agencies concerned is that the pub
ic interest can best be served by
zeeping all forms of transport in
ullest competition with one an
,ther, to keep the rates of service
It the lowest possible levels and to
prevent monopoly control.