Word: airmail
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Biggest fine ever assessed in U. S. history was the $29,000,000 penalty which Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis slapped on the old Standard Oil Co.-a fine which was never paid. Last week President Roosevelt came near Judge Landis' mark. By canceling all airmail contracts he in effect fined the stockholders of U. S. aviation companies an estimated $20,000,000, all because of the dubious methods employed by some of their company officers getting airmail contracts (see p. 30). There was a good chance, moreover, that, unlike Standard Oil, aviation stockholders would pay, for with air contracts...
...beginning of the decade there was no U. S. aviation industry worth mentioning. The Army and Navy did all the flying. In 1925 the Government awarded its first airmail contract to a private operator. A year later came the Air Commerce Act, and the beginnings of an airway system. Landing fields were hewn out of desert and mountain land. Beacon lights blossomed amid snow-capped peaks. The mail went through, at $3 a pound, with the pilot sitting on a parachute. Now and then, when a certain St. Louis mail pilot came roaring in with capers which today would bring...
...formed out of the Boeing Aircraft companies, took Pratt & Whitney over as a subsidiary, giving two and a fraction shares for one. Stockholder Deeds exchanged his 16,000 shares for 34,720 of United Aircraft, then selling for $97 per share. Net value: $3,367,000. United's airmail contracts, plus Pratt & Whitney's prosperous engine business, plus the bull market, pushed the stock up to a peak of $162 in May 1929. Mr. Deeds's $40 became $5,624,000. He liquidated holdings worth $1,600,000, but his remaining stock, at last week...
Such was the story (with its background) "Chuck" Deeds had inched out of him last week on the witness stand before the Senate Committee investigating airmail contracts. There was no suggestion that he had done anything wrong while being made a millionaire by a lucky combination of aeronautical engineering, business economics and public enthusiasm. But there was a very definite suggestion that something was wrong when great fortunes could be made out of an infant industry-i.e. aviation- which supposedly would have starved to death without Federal subsidies...
...Airmail Showdown...