Taking Flight: The Foundations of American Commercial Aviation, 1918–1938 by M. Houston Johnson V (review)

In Taking Flight, M. Houston Johnson V details the federal government’s central role in the development of commercial aviation in the United States between the two world wars. Drawing on the associationalist framework for government-business relations first elucidated by Ellis Hawley and most recently reimagined by Brian Balogh, Johnson documents the effect of government on American aviation from the 1925 Air Mail Act to the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 to illustrate “activist government’s ability to positively affect the commercial sector” (p. 1). He argues that a study of this “largely unexplored arena” yields three primary insights: 1) the “surprising continuity” between the Republican administrations of the 1920s and that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 2) that the Post Office Department’s fostering of commercial aviation through indirect air-mail subsidies “sharply differentiates” the U.S. experience from European nations, and 3) that aeronautical “enthusiasm helps to explain how” key figures of the era “could embrace a fundamentally similar perspective on federal policy” (pp. 1–3). But this is not an unknown subject among historians—a fact aptly illustrated by the book’s heavy reliance on Nick Komons’s Bonfires to Beacons and Robert F. van der Linden’s Airlines and Airmail—nor are Houston’s conclusions unique or groundbreaking. Other than the final chapter’s detailed analysis of the place of aviation infrastructure development in Roosevelt’s New Deal (previously published in the Journal of Policy History), this work does not substantially reshape the current historical narrative or increase our understanding of why policymakers from across the political spectrum ultimately approached aviation in such similar ways. As a result, Taking Flight serves as a convenient encapsulation of the current dominant narrative established over the last twenty years that provides a much needed albeit flawed update of Komons’s earlier work.

Johnson attributes the passage of both the 1925 Air Mail Act and the 1926 Air Commerce Act, the first federal regulation of civil aviation, “to [Secretary of Commerce Herbert] Hoover’s vision” and his “tireless work to create a consensus” (pp. 62, 65). While recognizing the actions of other individuals such as William P. MacCracken Jr., Postmaster Harry New, and President Calvin Coolidge in this process, the book’s unquestioning acceptance of the cult of Hoover—wherein a regulatory ideology radiated outward from the commerce secretary—leaves numerous questions unanswered. In an era where aeronautical activity remained centered primarily around the military, national security considerations and the views of the War and Navy Departments are completely absent. In addition, the desires and demands of the fledgling aviation industry, reeling from the abrupt cancellation of wartime contracts, remain largely unexplored. (This remains a noticeable omission, particularly since the Manufacturers Aircraft Association papers at the University of Wyoming are listed as a consulted archive but not a single document is cited in the notes.) Attributing the creation of a regulatory consensus during the Harding and Coolidge administrations to a single individual may offer a neat explanatory device, but it greatly oversimplifies a nuanced and detailed process.

This top-down methodology continues throughout the rest of the book as Johnson shifts to Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown’s use of air-mail contracts to foster a rational airway system in the Hoover administration and Alabama senator Hugo Black’s subsequent investigation under Roosevelt. Brown’s approach merged Theodore Roosevelt’s notion of beneficial trusts with Hoover’s associationalist approach. His actions cut to the heart of whether aviation constituted a “natural” monopoly along the lines of utilities and the railroad, but this larger issue is not properly developed. As a result of Senator Black’s hearings, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt abruptly cancelled all civil air-mail contracts and tasked the Army Air Corps with the transportation of the mail, a decision that resulted in the deaths of several airmen. The subsequent 1934 Air Mail...