ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the US Federal government laid the path for the modern American aircraft and aviation industry in the 1920s and 1930s. With the Air Commerce Act of 1926, aviation was thus recognized explicitly as a strategic industry in the United States. Perhaps the most important measure of government help to US commercial aviation had come with the inauguration of air mail service in 1918, which had been followed by the Air Mail Act of 1925 that allowed the awarding of contracts to private concerns for mail delivery. The Boeing Company played a small but significant part in the development of air mail service, flying a batch of mail from Vancouver to Seattle, the first air mail service between the US and Canada. Despite its impressive technological and commercial achievements, Boeing's conglomerate soon found itself upstaged by a small and previously little-known Californian rival, Donald Douglas.
