And so, out of the need for justifying our theory of air power, we discovered the greatest possible justification of it, namely, its economic soundness. The Post Office Department, like all government departments subjected to the handicaps of political patronage, was notoriously uneconomical, yet the air-mail operation could support a large slice of this excessive overhead and still show the department a profit on the operation. The railroads argued that the hidden subsidy of government airports and airways nullified the arguments, yet there was a long history of similar government support for highways and waterways. Meanwhile the Post Office subsidized directly the carriage of periodicals, and took serious losses on rural delivery and other classes of service. Here was a fact of profound importance to our air-power program: air mail was already self-sustaining and if subsequently the situation changed, losses could not be charged to air mail as such, but must be credited directly to inept management; that is, government regulation. This raised the whole question not alone of the reasonableness of the “reasonable regulation” but also of the principle itself. There is nothing in the history of the railroads to support the principle; cutthroat competition could hardly have been more disastrous than the present regulation. When, earlier, the railroads had found themselves face to face with the penalties of their own mistakes, they had sought to lean on government; they had asked for regulation and they had got it. Of course they had sacrificed their birthright for a mess of pottage because, having eased the economic pressure of the struggle to survive, they had removed the chief incentive to technological development. This point was admitted by Fred Williamson, then president of the New York Central, when he and I discussed the matter on a salmon-fishing trip to Anticosti Island. It had started as a bantering argument at a time when the New York Central was giving consideration to a suggestion that the railroad start its own airline. After I had set forth the case for air transport, Fred Williamson looked off down the Jupiter River and remarked in all earnestness: “You know, if the railroads had invested in engineering all the money they have spent seeking to gain legislative advantage over motor and air transport, we’d be in a far better competitive position today.” This whole matter of “reasonable regulation,” so critical with respect to a healthy air-transport industry, the key to air power, was one we had hoped to have studied by our air policy board, but in that hope we were disappointed. The National Planning Association issued a fine report on air-power policy, but certain government agencies blocked its support of our recommendation for the appointment of a presidential aviation commission. Under the circumstances we were not surprised when the President withheld action.