At the close of the Great War, fortunately for the aeronautic industry, approximately ten billion dollars has already been invested by European, American, and Asiatic countries in aeronautics. Part of this has been expended in constructing aircraft factories, aeronautic engines, aeroplanes, dirigibles, hangars; in obtaining raw materials and landing-fields; in training aviators and mechanics, and in making aeronautic machinery, equipment, and accessories. Thousands of furniture and piano factories, boat-building shops, and similar establishments have been manufacturing propellers, struts, ribs, pontoons, flying-boats, and so on; and hundreds of automobile-makers and engine manufacturers have given over their plants, or a goodly portion of them, to making motors, spars, and tools. Varnish, linen, cotton, castor-oil, goggles, clothes, and a hundred and one other things have also been used either in the direct manufacture of aircraft or in the equipment of the aviators or mechanics, so that there are to-day tens of thousands of skilled and unskilled artisans, aviators, mechanics, who are wondering how far the aeronautic engine, with its remarkable development from 16 horse-power, which the Wright brothers used, to the 700 horse-power of the Fiat, will be used in commercial aeronautics and how far the frail little Wright glider, which has grown into a machine weighing six tons, can be made a profitable means of aerial transportation. Moreover, all the scientific knowledge, trained technic, all the enormous investments in fixed property, and the tens of thousands of aircraft built or building is being turned to commercial purposes. They were not, and everything is being done to make the aeroplane do man’s bidding as easily and as readily as the steamboat, electric car, steam-engine, and automobile. Even though the aeroplane does travel the shortest route in the shortest time between any two given points, before a sufficient number of passengers can be induced to travel via the aerial line to make it financially profitable to the transportation company the public must be assured that it is reasonably safe; that they can fly in comfort; and that the price is reasonable. So let us first see what has been done and what is being done to satisfy those three requisites.