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aviation activities. Not surprisingly, Harding took the advice. He forwarded the report to Congress, recommended passage of legislation, and (as if to express his approval of the NACA's position) joined the Committee at its semiannual meeting of 21 April.

[graphic]

John Victory (far left) and George Lewis (sixth from left) pose outside the White House with the members of the Main Committee after meeting with President Harding, 21 April 1921. (National Archives)

The veneer of consensus began to crack as soon as Harding left the meeting. On a routine motion to approve the minutes of Executive Committee meetings, Thurman H. Bane, newly reverted from colonel to major, took exception to the Executive Committee's action at its 8 April meeting endorsing the report of the Subcommittee on Federal Regulation of Air Navigation for submission to the president. This action, asserted Bane, precluded the later establishment of a separate air service and ensured that army aviation would remain organized as it then was, a situation Bane considered "perfectly impossible." Reflecting what was probably the majority position in the NACA, one of the members "expressed the opinion that remarks of Major Bane may in effect be resolved into the question of whether the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics should consider the alleged failure of the Army to adequately recognize and provide for the development of the Army Air Service, and it was recorded as the sense of the meeting that the Committee was not called upon at this time to take up the question." 23 Lacking support, Bane's objection died. With it died the NACA's chance to serve as mediator in the storm of controversy that would soon consume the careers and passions of many leading American aviators and manufacturers. With it also lapsed the opportunity for

quick passage of civil-aviation legislation. Sides had been chosen for a fierce and bitter debate, and though the NACA would have preferred to remain above the controversy, feelings ran so high that neutrality proved impossible. To the advocates of a separate or unified air service, you were either with them or against them. From this time on, many of them believed that the NACA was against them.

Within days, this dispute in the meeting room of the NACA spilled into the press. The Baltimore Evening Sun and the New York Times reported "suppression of a minority report." Lester Gardner, editor of Aviation magazine, was in touch with both Walcott and Waldon, but the editorials he published were strongly on the side of the critics of the NACA. 24 There was no sure formula for picking sides in this dispute, but alliances were being formed nonetheless. One side included the Mitchell forces within the Army Air Service, who felt that the air arm was not getting its due. Allied with them were some aircraft manufacturers who foresaw greater promotion of aviation and thus more contracts for themselves if a separate air service was established. Attached to this alliance were some small manufacturers and inventors still smarting over the cross-licensing agreement and looking for a way to open up what they regarded as the aircraft trust. That these men now found themselves in league with the very forces they claimed were monopolizing the aircraft business is only one of the many ironies in the convoluted politics of what was to become the Air Commerce Act.

Arrayed against this alliance was what may be termed the establishment, consisting primarily of the government agencies concerned with aviation—the army, the navy, the Post Office Department, and the NACA. To call the NACA a government agency is valid in two senses. First, it was in fact an official branch of the federal government. Second, it was then, as always, controlled by its Executive Committee, and in 1921 Joseph Ames was the only member of the Executive Committee who was not also a representative of a government agency. This was one reason that critics of existing government policy felt that the NACA would not or could not give them a fair hearing, a belief especially strong in the aircraft industry, which was specifically barred from membership. When the Subcommittee on Federal Regulation of Air Navigation ignored the recommendation that industry be represented on the NACA, it condemned the Committee to an appearance of bias and partiality in the eyes of many in the aircraft industry. 25

The public flap over the minority report embarrassed the Committee and reinforced the commitment to unanimity of opinion that had resulted from the 1918 controversy over the Ames letter published in The Atlantic Monthly. It did not, however, alter NACA policy. The Committee's majority report to the president recommended passage of the modified Kahn bill it had favored in the previous session. Congressmen

Kahn and Hicks resubmitted similar bills to the new Congress. Kahn's bill was still in a sense a "stop-gap" measure because it did not resolve the question of government organization of aviation activities, but provided merely for the creation of a bureau of aeronautics in the Department of Commerce. Still, most in government agreed with Ames that "all agencies should unite in support of that measure at this time, and not injure the prospect of securing such legislation by the consideration or urging of legislation for a general reorganization of aviation activities." 26

The other side was not without its friends in Congress. In a move attributed to supporters of a united air service, Senator William E. Borah introduced a resolution 17 June to abolish the NACA and transfer its functions to other government agencies. The parallel between the intent of this resolution and the actual experience of the British at this time makes one suspect that the NACA's enemies must have been looking to England. When the Air Ministry was created there in 1918, the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (on which the NACA had been modeled) was transformed into the Aeronautics Research Committee, shorn of much of its power and independence, drained of funds, and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Aircraft Factory. In the opinion of one informed British critic in May 1921, "research has been almost abandoned." C.G. Grey, outspoken editor of the British magazine The Aeroplane, described to an American correspondent at about this time "the delightfully chaotic arrangements" under which aviation then suffered in England, and observed that "apparently your Government is trying to produce a state of affairs which is just about equally irrational." 27

The NACA's enemies might deny that the arrangement they were trying to create was irrational, but they were obviously attempting to duplicate the British Air Ministry situation, assuring for the NACA the fate that had befallen the British ACA. Nor was emasculation of the NACA their only ploy. A group of manufacturers, reportedly led by Lester Gardner of Aviation magazine, petitioned President Harding to direct Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to appoint an aviation consulting committee composed entirely of manufacturers, to prepare a national aviation policy for the approval of the president-an obvious counter to the policy already drafted and presented by the NACA. Secretary Hoover actually agreed to appoint such a board, falling (said John Victory) into a "trap laid by selfish interests" who wanted a separate air service "and innocently concurred in by others influenced by their propaganda.

28

Although the NACA succeeded in blocking appointment of an industry committee, advocates of the separate air service also succeeded in blocking the NACA's preferred legislation. So by the spring

of 1921 a stalemate arose that was to dominate and frustrate all attempts to get civil-aviation legislation for the next five years. Neither side was strong enough to get its position adopted, but either side was strong enough to block the other. Ironically and tragically, both sides wanted federal encouragement and regulation of civil aviation, but each side would hold such legislation hostage to its own view of how the government should be organized for aviation activities. As Walcott put it in a letter to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, son of the late president, when discussing the chances for passing the Hicks bill: "There are influences which hold that a separate Air Service, of a Department of Aeronautics, should be established, and while they recognize the absolute need for Federal regulation of air navigation for the development of aviation in America, they have announced their intention of opposing the measures recommended." 29

The means used by the "influences" to oppose the NACAsupported legislation was the Department of Commerce. A group of manufacturers centered in Detroit and led by Howard Coffin met with Secretary Hoover in mid-July, expressed dissatisfaction with the Hicks bill, and offered to draw up their own substitute. The following month, identical legislation was introduced in both House and Senate. Although modeled on the original NACA-supported legislation, these new bills contained significant modifications: the commissioner of aeronautics would not be a member of the NACA, and the commissioner would be empowered to establish his own aerological services and to undertake research. All three of these changes were opposed by the NACA.30

With two sets of conflicting legislation before both houses of Congress, both sides turned to compromise. On 8 December 1921, representatives of the NACA and the aircraft manufacturers met in Washington to work out their differences. With deceptive ease, they concurred in modifications to the pending legislation, prompting George Lewis to report shortly after the meeting that "for the first time in the history of aviation in this country an agreement was reached by all parties concerned." New House and Senate bills incorporating the agreement were quickly introduced and the NACA took charge of a campaign to see them through to passage. John Victory, then working on a degree in international law at Georgetown University night school, coordinated the exchanges between the congressional friends of the bill and the various private and government interests who were following the legislation. 31

Just when success seemed imminent, a new obstacle arose: the Constitution. Several legal questions about the bills came up in Congress early in 1922, most importantly whether they were in conflict with the International Convention on Air Navigation recently signed at

the peace conference in Paris, and whether the federal government had the power to regulate intrastate flying. Legal opinions were sought both inside and outside the government, and yet another version of the bill was introduced in the Senate. This latest draft was a political compromise worked out in the Senate Commerce Committee to head off objections on the Senate floor. While the NACA forces believed this version contained "a number of objectionable changes," they also thought it good politics to support the bill in the Senate and seek amendment in the House. It passed the full Senate on 14 February 1922 and went to the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, chaired by Representative Samuel E. Winslow. There the bill died. 32

Winslow himself was now the obstacle. Influencing him were two groups opposed to the legislation worked out between the NACA and the manufacturers. One was a group of midwestern manufacturers who viewed the bill as the work of eastern manufacturers trying to monopolize the industry, a suspicion reminiscent of the old charges of an aircraft trust. The other group, in strange alliance with these forces, was a faction in the Department of Commerce who felt the secretary of commerce should have a stronger voice in regulating civil aviation than the bill provided. Leading these forces was Judge William E. Lamb, former solicitor general of the Department of Commerce. He submitted to Winslow the draft of an entirely new piece of legislation calling for a unified air service, broader power for the secretary of commerce, and transfer of the NACA to the Department of Commerce. 33 This last provision was the first in a series of attempts throughout the NACA's history to transfer the Committee to the Department of Commerce. Many motives inspired these efforts, but this first one apparently sprang from parallel desires to strengthen the hand of the secretary of commerce and at the same time to eliminate the opposition of the NACA to the plans of those who would create a separate air force and break up what was seen as an aircraft trust.

The initiative for drafting civil-aviation legislation had now shifted from the NACA to the Department of Commerce. The department disavowed Lamb's draft, so Winslow decided to draft his own bill for introduction in the next Congress and to seek support from the forces behind Lamb's version. From this time on, the NACA would be in the uncomfortable position of opposing legislation that it badly wanted. Many of the subsequent bills made transfer of the Committee to the department a keystone of any plan to organize the government for administration of civil aviation. This was too great a price for the NACA to pay; it would not sacrifice itself to the need for civil-aviation legislation.

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