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thoroughfare. The marquee announces a new offering: "Diabolique". This French importation is running concurrently in the large city some 500 miles away. In fact, the Bijou often shows the latest hits before metropolitan theatres. Swift aerial film service makes this possible. 

The same is true of the shops just down a piece from the Bijou. Overnight they receive the smartest fashions from New York and Hollywood.  A shrinking world has brought the goods, the customs, and the ideas of peoples everywhere to Main Street.

"...A shrinking world...."

Therein lies the chief difference between yesterday's and today's Main Street.  Certainly Main Street today is the backbone of America even as it was yesterday.  But whereas Sinclair Lewis talked of Main Street as the extension of all other Main Streets in the Gopher Prairies of America, today's Main Street is more likely the extension of Fifth Avenue.

Why?

The answer in general is because of air transportation.  The answer in particular is because of local air transportation.  The answer is because 13 local service airlines have tied small-town America to big-city America--becfause 13 local service airlines have tied small-town America to the world.  Since to the length and breadth of America the local service carriers have added depth, the isolated American community is rapidly becoming an anachronism.

Local airline service was inaugurated, on an experimental basis, a little more than 10 years ago.  It was a further implementation of the spirit of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938--that the US should have an air transportation system capable of serving the nation as a whole.  The scheduled trunk airlines already had linked together the big US cities.  Now it was a question of developing the air map locally.  The process could be likened to the natural growth of a boy who first gets his height before he begins to fill out.

It may be asked by the airlines already in existence were not encouraged to develop local service.  The answer is found in the philosophy of the Civil Aeronautics Board, whose members chart the course for the development of our airline system.  The Board maintained that there was a fundamental difference between trunk carriers and local service carriers, giving them different objectives.  The primary objective of the trunk carrier was to tie together the major cities or hubs within a given trading area, and in turn, to link that trading area with other trading areas.  The primary objective of the local service carrier was to link the small and intermediate communities in a given trading area to the major cities or hubs within the same area.  In this way, it was reasoned, people, mail and goods would be channeled, by the local carriers, from small and intermediate-size communities into the large terminal cities served by the trunk carriers; and vice versa.

In deciding that a new group of airlines should be created to round out the nation's transportation system, the Board had this to say:

"The type of service we here visualize involves an entirely new type of service gaged to meet the needs of smaller communities and relatively short hauls.  In view of the limited traffic potentialities of points on the new system, an unusual effort will be required to develop the maximum traffic.  Greater effort and the exercise of managerial ingenuity may be expected from an independent local operator whose continuation in te air transportation business will be dependent upon the successful development of traffic on the routes and the operation of the service on an adequate and economical basis."

It was believed that the reason that caused the hare to outrun the hound would cause the local service carriers to develop more traffic than the trunks at intermediate points.  The hare was running for his life while the hound was running for his lunch.  It was a question of incentive.

As, over the yeras, one community after another has been added to local service routes, we know that the incentive has been there, until today nearly 500 points are being served by the local airlines.  Of those points, more than 270 receive their only air service from a local carrier, while many communities have no other type of common-carrier service.  Passenger travel on local airlines more than trebled in the five-year period 1950-1955--from 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 passengers.  During the same period mail volume rose from 599,000 ton-miles to 2,700,000 ton-miles, while the volume of freight jumped from 714,000 ton-miles to 1,147,000 ton-miles.  This record earned for the locals permanent certificates last year.

But the real story of local airline achievement is found behind the statistic. It is found out on the line--it is found along the 30,000 miles of local airline routes, where the average distance between stops is less than 100 miles.  It is there that the local carriers are binding vast spaces, natural resources and scattered cities into a common economic and cultural union.  It is there that the local carriers are making the word isolation obsolescent.

Chambers of Commerce in small-town America are eloquent in their testimony that business and industry are settling in their communities because of the excellence of local airline service.  The industries include new manufacturing plants, distributors and other enterprises seeking dispersal from large metropolitan areas.

Recently Southern Airways directed an inquiry to the Chamber of Commerce (or comparable civic group) in each of the communities it serves exclusively, by which it is meant that no other airline--local or trunk--provides air service to those communities.

Among the questions asked were:

1.  Has airline service resulted in the location of new industry in your community?

2.  How can this airline assist your city in the location of additional industries?

Nearly all the respondents stated unequivocally that the new industries which had recently located in the respective communities would not have done so had not regular, daily scheduled airline service been available.  Several of the Chambers suggested that the airline establish a regular department of community solicitations for the location of new plant sitse.  Without exception, acknowledgement was made that Southern offered an indispensable community service.

The Ford Motor Company recently located a proving ground at Kingman, Arizona.  One of the chief reasons for selecting the site was because of the scheduled air service provided by Bonanza Airlines.  An official of Bonanza comments on his new neighbor as follows:

"Our part in Ford's operation amounts to this: Parts, such as radiators, generators, transmission gears, carburetors and tires are shipped from Detroit one evening and arrive in our town, via airline, the next morning.  These parts are rushed to the proving ground, installed on a test Ford, run all day, removed, rushed to the airport, placed aboard one of our flights and are delivered to the Ford Company in Detroit the following morning.  It has

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