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Roosevelt in 1934, by other government bodies, and by innumerable private agencies. Out of all this investigation there has come only one really constructive and comprehensive plan which has commanded any appreciable amount of assent. That plan now stands in the form of carefully framed legislation, carrying with it unanimous recommendations made after prolonged hearings by the Committees on Interstate Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Senate at the past session of Congress. The proposal is embodied in the two companion bills, Senate Bill No. 2 and House of Representatives Bill No. 7273. What, in brief, do they provide?

The general scheme of these bills is to extend to the air transport industry the system of Government regulation first perfected in the case of the railroad, and more recently extended to the motor carriers and to the telephone, telegraph and radio industries. This system comprises regulation of rates, both maximum rates to protect the public from over-charges, and minimum rates to prevent rate wars; provision that no operation may be conducted without a certificate that the public convenience and necessity so require issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission; abolition of the system of mail contracts and authorization to the Post Office Department to transport mail over the lines of any carrier holding an appropriate certificate at rates of pay to be fixed by the Interstate Commerce Commission; and control by the Commission over accounting, the issuance of securities, acquisitions of control, mergers and combinations, and over trade agreements which must be approved by the Commission. All of these matters, quasi-judicial in character, are placed under the control of an independent non-partisan commission. At the same time the purely administrative controls over the air transport industry - matters of safety and postal administration - are left in the Department of Commerce and the Post Office Department, where they now stand.

III. Objections to Commission control considered and answered. 

Various objections and criticisms which from time to time have been offered in regard to this proposed system of regulation are familiar. However, in passing, it may be said that the bills are somewhat unusual in having the support of both capital and labor employed in the air transport industry, of the large lines and of the small, and of many state and local officials and citizens interested in aviation and the national defense throughout the country. Such opposition as there is springs, we believe, from a misunderstanding either of the provisions of the bills or of the factual situation upon which they operate. We will attempt to clear up these misunderstandings.

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