Confusion Confounded

No. 1 mystery story in the U. S. last week was the airmail situation. If anybody had an inkling of what would happen, he kept his peace. With some 40 conflicting bills in Congress. Postmaster General Farley intimated he would drop his temporary contract plan if permanent legislation is passed before April 20, when bids for temporary contracts are to be opened.

First break in the situation came from potent ($39,000,000) United Aircraft & Transport Corp., whose President Philip G. Johnson announced decision to reorganize in order to bid for future mail rights.* In line with the Administration's wishes, United's big operating unit (United Air Lines) will be divorced from manufacturing subsidiaries (Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, et al.). In announcing the change President Johnson gravely protested cancellation of his company's mail contracts last February.

This left but one major operator who has never protested--American Airways' inscrutable Errett Lobban Cord.

In Washington, confusion was confounded when three Republican Senators (Barbour, Davis, Austin) announced they would introduce an amendment to the existing (McNary-Watres) airmail law, restoring all voided contracts and paving the way for wholesale damage suits against the Government.

*Last week, for borrowing $10,000 in 1930 from United's Vice President Paul Henderson, Chase C. Gove. Assistant Superintendent of the Post Office's Railway Mail Service, was suspended (pending investigation). At the time he was deputy to Warren Irving Glover, then Second Assistant Postmaster General in charge of airmail contracts.

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