US Industrial ‘Golden Age’ Requires Federal Support

The US Postal Service last month agreed to cut 10,000 people from its payrolls over a 30-day span, one component of a broad Trump administration plan to shrink the size and spending of the federal government and give greater space for private-sector led economic growth.

A century ago, the USPS played a very different economic role. It was the pivotal actor in creating the entire American airline industry. A Republican congressman, Clyde Kelly, championed legislation in 1925 letting the USPS contract with private airlines to deliver mail. Buying planes and setting up route networks was (and is) costly, and aircraft weren’t built yet to take many passengers, so the mail contracts helped to jump-start airlines. Even then, the government had to subsidize carriers’ operating losses.