How much does your air mail cost today: about 10–20 cents per ounce? And how often do you use airlines for travelling? Do you know that current availability of passenger flights and low air mail prices were inspired by actions of one man, Walter Folger Brown. Appointed postmaster general by President Hebert Hoover in 1928, Brown has asked a Congress for legislation that would give him the authority to change existing postal policy; one of those times was inefficient and costly. Private airmail carriers received up to 80 percent of the revenue from airmail postage. However, the public did not send much airmail because it was expensive, and neither the Post Office nor the airmail carriers made money.
Improvements made by postmaster Brown were radical. He had convened the conference to get airline operators to agree to a consolidation of the various airmail routes into three or four coast to coast networks operated by the best equipped and most financially stable companies. It was United Airlines that kept the northern airmail routes; Transcontinental and Western Airlines operated in the middle of the US; and American Airways flew across the southern part. Additionally Brown stripped all the benefits for air mail transportation and created incentives for passenger flights. Unfortunately, Brown fall into political disfavor when the new democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected. In 1993 charges were made against the postmaster fro collusion, illegal administration and unfair mail awards. Small aviation companies, which were pushed out of the business complained along with Senator Hugo Black who investigated the air mail case, were accusing Brown for improper use of power he gained. The conclusion was Brown has made it so, that air mail business has gone completely to friends of the Hoover administration.
Nevertheless, they could not charge Brown for incompetence or unsuccessful policy.
