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308 NATIONAL POLITICS I918-1922
was found to be a single-motored plane with a top speed of 1 1 5 mph, a landing speed of 50 mph, and a cruising endurance of four hours. Airplane No. 12, which had been the first to carry air mail between New York and Washington on May 15, 191 8, was still in service after three years and five months! But it had only a carrying capacity of 200 pounds and a top speed of 75 mph. Such statistics, quoted today, seem unbelievable.
In October we released new statistics on the progress of the air mail. From July 1 to September 1 the performance record was 98 per cent, as against a record for the previous year of 78 per cent of the trips completed and 83 per cent of the miles. The cost of operation per mile was 73Y3 cents as opposed to $1.02 per mile in May of 1921! And no fatalities had occurred on regular air-mail runs across the continent.
As a special tribute to Marshal Foch, a squadron of six air-mail planes flew in formation from Omaha to Kansas City, where the French leader was the honor guest of the American Legion's Third Annual Convention in Kansas City. During the three-day convention special air-mail service between the two cities was inaugurated.
A pending railway strike gave air mail another boost. One hundred members of the Aero Club in Omaha, under their club president, offered their services to recruit five hundred volunteer pilots to carry the mails in case of strike. The need to call out these fliers never arose, but recognition of the fact that planes could be an important commercial auxiliary was clearly indicated by this offer.
Making the air mail a part of the postal service had taken a tremendous amount of time, patience, money, and planning. During the year 1921 we had cut out almost every auxiliary route and devoted ourselves to making the transcontinental route a safe and indispensable time-saver. The performance record for the fiscal year 1921 was 85.96 per cent. The report in 1922, when the figure for performance was up to 94.39 per cent, was not at all apologetic. By the close of the fiscal year 1922 we could report that we had seventy planes in the air-mail service, a figure nearly doubling the thirty-six in service reported for 1 92 1.
After the House of Representatives had clipped the wings of the Post Office Department, I picked up all the arguments I could muster and went flving over to the Senate Appropriations Committee, to give them ten good reasons why the air-mail appropriation should be restored in the Post Office Appropriations Bill for the fiscal year 1923. The one fatality in the last million miles flown, the economic resuscitation the service had undergone, the care which had been exercised in the operation of it, and the real need to preserve and build up air power for the sake of the country's defense were undoubtedly appealing arguments which helped to restore the $2,000,000 stricken from the bill.