75TH CONGRESS 3d Session

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (REPT. 2254

Part 2

CIVIL AERONAUTICS BILL

MAY 5, 1938.-Ordered to be printed

Mr. MAPES, from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, submitted the following

MINORITY VIEWS

[To accompany H. R. 9738]

The undersigned members of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce submit the following minority views with respect to the fundamental issue involved in the bill; that is, whether or not another commission or bureau, designated in the bill as recommended by the majority of the committee as the "Civil Aeronautics Authority,' shall be created to regulate air commerce, or whether the Interstate Commerce Commission shall be clothed with authority to do the job.

The undersigned believe that it is totally unnecessary to create a new governmental agency for the purpose. To do so is not only an extravagant and useless expenditure of public funds but will actually retard and weaken the proper regulation of this industry, which all agree is urgent. urgent. It will mean setting up an entirely new and inexperienced organization with all that that means, when the Interstate Commerce Commission already has an experienced and expert organization in existence.

As was well stated by David L. Behncke, president, Air Line Pilots Association, in testifying before the committee:

We believe that all forms of transportation should be coordinated into a single agency. We believe there is a great advantage to having air transportation regulated by an experienced body such as the Interstate Commerce Commission where the rules and practices are known and the effects can be reasonably predicted. Any new agency must necessarily be an unknown quantity until it has gone through a character-building period during which time practically all of its rules, procedures, practices, and so forth must be worked out by trial and error, and after many years they will probably be on the same footing with an agency such as the Interstate Commerce Commission insofar as actual results are concerned. In other words, a new agency will have to go through a long period before it becomes stabilized in the same way and to the same extent as the Interstate Commerce Commission practices are stabilized today."

The action of the majority of the committee in reporting the bill providing for this new Authority is a complete reversal of the unani

mous action of the committee during the first session of this Congress. The committee reported H. R. 7273, now on the calendar, without a dissenting vote. It has been on the calendar since May 28, 1937. It proposes to amend the Interstate Commerce Act by providing for the regulation of the transportation of passengers and property by air carriers in interstate, overseas, and foreign commerce by the Interstate Commerce Commission. No action has been taken on that bill since it was reported by the committee nearly a year ago.

In its report on H. R. 7273 last year the committee stated thatThe fundamental purpose of this proposed legislation is to extend to the Interstate Commerce Commission regulatory powers over air transportation, generally similar, so far as applicable, to the powers it now exercises over rail and motor transportation.

The Interstate Commerce Act, as amended, including parts I and II, governs the regulation of steam railroads, electric railways, express companies, sleepingcar companies, pipe lines, steamship lines controlled by railroads, water lines engaged in joint operation with rail lines, and motor carriers. This bill would continue the established policy of the Congress in coordinating under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, all interstate transportation. The regulation is adapted to the special characteristics of transportation by air and is carried no further than is necessary in the interest of the public.

This bill follows the program recommended by the President in messages to the Congress. The ultimate purpose of the program is the coordination of the transportation of the Nation, thus serving the needs of interstate and foreign commerce and the national defense.

No adequate reason has been assigned to justify this complete reversal of form on the part of a majority of the committee. The same reasons exist today for clothing the Interstate Commerce Commission with authority to regulate air commerce as existed 1 year ago.

The present action of the majority of the committee is not only contrary to the unanimous action of the committee 1 year ago, but it is contrary to the recommendations of the President as submitted to Congress on two separate occasions. The majority report says that certain executive departments approved of the present bill, but it makes no reference to the attitude of the President toward it. There is nothing in the report to indicate that he has changed his position.

The undersigned believe that it is bad public policy to create different commissions to regulate different phases of transportation. It cannot help but create conflict, overlapping of authority, duplication of work, and unnecessary expenditure of public funds. It is against the public interest from every standpoint. There should be unified control of all phases of transportation.

In submitting the report of the Federal Aviation Commission to Congress in January 1935, the President said:

I believe that we should avoid the multiplication of separate regulatory agencies in the field of transportation. Therefore, in the interim before a permanent consolidated agency is created or designated over the transportation as a whole, a division of the Interstate Commerce Commission can well serve the needs of air transportation. In the granting of powers and duties by the Congress orderly government calls for the administration of executive functions by those administrative departments or agencies which have functioned satisfactorily in the past and, on the other hand, calls for the vesting of judicial functions in agencies already accustomed to such powers. It is this principle that should be followed in all the various aspects of transportation legislation.

And, as recently as April 11, 1938, in his message to Congress relating to relief for railroads, the President said:

From the point of view of business efficiency, such as a private corporation would seek, it would seem to be the part of common sense to place all executive functions relating to all transportation in one Federal department-such as the Department of Commerce, the Department of the Interior, or some other old or new department. At the same time all quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative matters relating to all transportation could properly be placed under an independent commission—a reorganized Interstate Commerce Commission.

The present bill does not adhere to the recommendations of the President in either one of these respects.

Commissioner Eastman, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, during the hearings on H. R. 7273, speaking of his experience as Coordinator of Railroads, testified:

I also reached the conclusion that the transportation problem is, after all, a single problem and not a series of problems, because all of these forms of transportation are interrelated in at least two different ways: They are either interrelated by competition or they are interrelated by the opportunities for cooperation and coordination between them or by both. Therefore, it seems highly desirable to concentrate regulation in a single body instead of spreading it over a number of separate bodies. That is necessary not only in the interest of proper coordination between these various forms of transportation but to insure fair and impartial treatment of them all by a body, which has not greater or different responsibility with respect to any one of them than to any of the others.

All students of the transportation question agree with the position taken by the President and Commissioner Eastman on the desirability of unified control of the transportation systems of the country.

As stated by Prof. Emery R. Johnson, of the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania, in a new work on Government Regulation of Transportation:

The task to be performed by the Government is the regulation of transportation as a whole and in the general public interest. This involves the regulation of all the agencies of transportation by applying to each of them like principles of regulation for the accomplishment of a common purpose-that of enabling each agency to function advantageously and appropriately as a part of a national transportration system.

We recognize the need of additional legislation for the regulation of agencies engaged in transportation in air commerce. We favor the passage of the bill on the calendar reported unanimously by the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce giving the Interstate Commerce Commission additional authority for that purpose. are opposed to the pending bill for the reasons above stated.

CARL E. MAPES.

CHAS. A. WOLVERTON.
JAMES WOLFENDEN.
PEHR G. HOLMES.

CARROLL REECE.

We

JAMES W. WADSWORTH.

CHARLES A. HALLECK.
GARDNER R. WITHROW.

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75TH CONGRESS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 3d Session

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REPORT No. 2257

ADDITIONAL UNITED STATES JUDGES

MAY 2, 1938.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed

Mr. SUMNERS of Texas, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany S. 3691]

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (S. 3691) to provide for the appointment of additional judges for certain United States district courts, circuit courts of appeals, and certain courts of the United States for the District of Columbia, after consideration, report the same with an amendment with the recommendation that as so amended the bill do pass.

The committee amendment consists of striking out all after the enacting clause of the Senate bill, and inserting the provisions of the bill H. R. 10014 as reported to the House by the Judiciary Committee, with an amendment.

The committee amendment is as follows: Strike out all after the enacting clause of the Senate bill, S. 3691, and insert in lieu thereof the following:

That the President is authorized to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, four additional circuit judges, one for each of the following judicial circuits: Second, fifth, sixth, and seventh.

SEC. 2. The President is authorized to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, one additional associate justice of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

SEC. 3. Section 2 of the Act entitled "An Act authorizing the appointment of an additional circuit judge for the third circuit", approved June 24, 1936 (49 Stat. 1903) is hereby repealed.