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Page 22.

be expected to return a profit from its commercial employment (except under very favorable conditions) the cost of its development as a national asset is one that should be borne by the nation as a whole and not by a few manufacturers and users. A condition exists today with regard to aircraft very similar to that which existed prior to and for years immediately after, the Civil War, with reference to railroad transportation. 
There is this great difference however, that internal development of the United States by means of government aided railroads (bonded land-grants, etc.) affected the United States only and was under the control of the United States, while with aircraft, national limits exist only from a political and not a geographic, standpoint, and if the United States does not develop aircraft and its uses, so as to keep abreast of the development by other nations, foreign commercial aircraft will acquire such a commanding position in the commercial world as will enable it to practically control internal, as well as external usage of this means of transportation, in exactly the same manner that the British Board of Trade, Admiralty, and Lloyd's Insurance (through the commanding position obtained and held by the British Merchant Marine) were for many years able to exercise over marine transportation.