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towel as an airmail operator. But others took up the challenge. North-west Airways, Inc., was organized to fly the route and the two first pilots hired were (first) David L. Behncke and (second) the late Charles W. ("Speed") Holman. In months of careful flying, a route of danger was transformed into a route of safety.
Behncke moved on in November, 1928 to work with UAL as a pilot. Doubts over the future assailed him, however. "There wasn't much incentive to stay in the business because e v e r y two or three months we would get a wage cut," he explains. Hours were uncertain -sometimes pilots flew 120 hours and more a month. In such soil the seed of the Air Line Pilots Association was sown.
"Unionism and organization among workers, while criticized in many quarters, are born of a definite need," Behncke says, "and that need was never more natural than in our profession.
"We didn't organize because we wanted to; we organized because we had to."
The seedling grew a whole year before it saw the sunshine. With Behncke as a leader, a small group of pilots met, swore each other to secrecy and set up an organization which formed the nucleus of the association which spread over the United States. It only came out in
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