However, the witness did not waste further time on this alternative but, acting on the assumption that the doctrine of regulating the airlines as a public utility would be preserved, went on to develop his own case with all the unique persuasiveness that had helped him pioneer Pan American in one of the most impressive displays of self-reliance, individual initiative, and private enterprise of modern times. His discussion led up naturally to the merger of Pan American with American Overseas Airlines which he and “C.R.” had earlier submitted to the Civil Aeronautics Board. In justifying this, Juan expounded his well-known thesis of the “chosen instrument” advocating a government policy of maintaining one American-flag system—Pan American Airways—in the international field, supported with frank outright subsidies such as those paid under the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. He justified his position by citing its benefits to the stockholders of the company and argued that the higher wages thus made available to American workmen employed in international aviation would constitute a subsidy to them. With the major certificated airlines mobilized solidly in support of the “chosen instrument” policy, the Committee received a clear statement of the opposing point of view from Raymond A. Norden, president of Seaboard and Western Airlines, Inc. One of the independents who had been characterized by Captain Eddie Rickenbacker as “irregulars,” “latecomers,” “interlopers,” “pretenders,” and so forth, Mr. Norden undertook to support Eddie’s contention that the airlines were suffering from too much coddling. In perhaps the outstanding statement to be made to the Committee, he put his finger on the crux of the airline controversy. “The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938,” he said, “is unusual among regulatory statutes in one very important respect. Other forms of transportation have not customarily been subjected to comprehensive regulation until the pattern of growth has been assured and until the industry has become so highly developed competitively that there is need for rigid controls and restraints in order to prevent destructive practices.” Out of the background of the airplane story to date, one might argue the other way around, namely that once the rigid controls and restraints are imposed, the growth pattern becomes stabilized. Mr. Norden went on to argue with persuasion: “Aviation is relatively a new business. Air freight, as distinguished from other forms of aviation business, is in its infancy. Yet the entire aviation industry is hedged about with red tape, the like of which has never been encountered in any other form of American industry. One has merely to look at legal payments made by some of the certificated carriers. TWA, for example, in 1948 alone, paid a single law firm the sum of $340,000. My own small company spent in excess of $50,000 in legal expense. Sometimes I feel as though I had more lawyers than pilots.”