So in 1931, I think it was about that time, we got our first radio installed in an aircraft. This was really a breakthrough because not only could you pick up a microphone and could call Minneapolis out of the airplane but hear from them as well – Can you imagine anything, anything as marvelous as that? What will they think of next? The interesting thing was the Captains were so set on doing things the way they’d always done them, they weren’t really too interested in thus new-fangled device. They didn’t think it was here to stay. But the co-pilot had nothing to do most of the time so he loved to have something to play with. We could take up the microphone and talk to somebody outside the airplane. So gradually radio microphones were accepted and they became a big part of the business.

            Some Minneapolis-Chicago flights were non-stop. A lot stopped at Rochester, Eau Claire, Madison and Milwaukee. Might be non-stop all the way down and make the stops coming back, or vice verse. I think we had two flights a day. We also had a Hamilton operating from Green Bay, Wisconsin down to Milwaukee that connected with the main line. We were in competition, of course, with the Empire Builder which was a 12-hour train ride from Minneapolis to Chicago. As time went on we got more and more hardy souls who were willing to take a chance on this new-fangled method of transportation. As I recall, we were getting $75 round trip for passengers between Minneapolis and Chicago and again, those were hard dollars if you related that to what they charge today.

            Everything was going along very smoothly – everything was fine – until President Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and took office in 1933. There was a lot of unrest in the airline business; there was a lot of competition. As I remember, E.L. Cord, who built the Cord automobile, took over a company called Century Airlines, which was, I think, the predecessor of American Airlines. I think I mentioned that I was making $78 a month but the pilots were being paid about $1,000 a month. Again, these were hard dollars so that was a pretty good wage, particularly in the 30’s during the depression. The interesting part of this is that E.L. Cord came along and decided that he could revolutionize the whole industry, so he offered to the Post Office to carry the mail for nothing. As I recall, they were paying the airlines about $7 a pound for airmail. You got that whether you had a pound or not. You know, the Company would airmail letters to officers, maybe send them to Milwaukee or LaCrosse, someplace. A letter to anybody and it would go into a mail pouch and the mail pouch, by the time they got a lock on it, and everything else, would weight four or five pounds. I’m not sure the figures I’m using are accurate but this, basically, was the way it was done.

            So when E.L. Cord offered to haul the airmail for nothing he was really making a tremendous offer to the government. But soon the government smelled a rat here, and didn’t accept his offer, because if they had, they realized he would get a monopoly and he could charge them anything he wanted to. So Cord had to give up on this airmail deal, but he decided that airline pilots were nothing more than glorified truck drivers and he locked his pilots out one night and said anybody who wants to work tomorrow for $250 a month, we’d be glad to see you. That, I think, was the thing that really decided the airline pilots that they had to get organized. They began meeting and trying to decide what they could do. The ultimate result was the forming of the Air Line Pilots Association. Dave Behncke was its first President. He quit Northwest before I went to work for them. He only worked for Northwest as I recall for about a year and a half. He was one of the first pilots Northwest hired in 1926. He went with United, I think, but it wasn’t United in those days.

            Well, after Roosevelt got into office he decided the United States Air Corps could fly the airmail. There was quite a flap about the airline company’s giving the government a bad deal, so he arbitarily cancelled all the airmail contracts along about January, 1934, and he sent the Army Air Corps up to fly. They flew the airmail for three months, January, February and March. Keep in mind that instrument flying had just been born a couple of years before and the Corps had never been taught to fly instruments, or did they fly at night. The Army Air Corp flew from 9 to 5. After 5 the whole thing shut down and everybody went to the officers club. That was the way things were when all the airmail contracts were cancelled. The net result was that in the three months the Army Air Corps pilots were trying to fly transcontinental runs across the country without any training in instrument flying or night flying. They were crashing airplanes all over the countryside. It got so bad that the government finally had to cry uncle and call off the Army Air Corps – put them back on their bases and get the airlines back in operation. They’d already said how bad everybody was, they’d said so many things they couldn’t take back, the only thing they could do was force the airlines to reorganize.