"Adequately Demonstrated"

A man with a great many chickens laying for him will usually take his small boys out around the haycocks, the mangers, back of the pigpen, under the icehouse, the wagons and the currant bushes, to show them all the nests and how to collect the eggs, carry them carefully, set them down uncracked in the dairy ready for market. After the boys know their job, the man is free to go off and saw wood or milk his cows.

Similarly Postmaster General Harry S. New. Last week he called for purchasers' bids on the two airmail routes which remain under Federal ownership--the 2,665-mile stretch from New York to San Francisco, the 796-mile overnight route between Chicago and New York. It had never been the Government's intention to conduct these services permanently. Fourteen other routes, totaling 5,553 miles one way, had been opened by the Government and all turned over to private contractors. Now Mr. New judged commercial aviation to be strong enough, and the feasibility, the practicability of airmail carrying to be "adequately demonstrated," for private contractors to relieve the Post Office Department entirely. He gave bidders 30 days to make their offers for "something like" 85 airplanes, 15 hangars located at fields all across the country, several million dollars' worth of shop equipment. Eyes turned toward the leading U. S. airmail contractors-- Henry Ford in Detroit, the Colonial Air Transport Inc. (New England), National Air Transport Inc. (Midwest), Pacific Air Transport Inc.-- expecting some joint or combined offer for the transcontinental job and properties.