Special Committee to Investigate Air Mail and Ocean Mail ContractsSenator Hugo Black

https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mail-contracts.htm

"In 1932, with the nation in the grips of a crippling economic depression, members of Congress pledged to rein in federal spending. High on the list of proposed cuts was $16 million in federal subsidies to finance national air mail service. Intended as incentives to

bolster the fledgling passenger airline and merchant marine industries, the subsidies had been criticized as government giveaways to friends and associates of the Herbert Hoover administration."

"The November 1932 election handed the Democrats control of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House. During the lame duck months of the 72nd Congress, as the Democratic minority prepared to become the majority, the Senate's Democratic floor leader,

Senator Joe Robinson of Arkansas, proposed an in-depth study of the air and ocean mail contracts awarded by the Hoover administration. The postmaster general's decision to award four new contracts in the last weeks of the Hoover administration, despite the explicit

objection of congressional committees, furthered congressional resolve to investigate."

(During the early months of the inquiry, investigators uncovered evidence that top level officials in the Hoover administration, including Postmaster General Walter F. Brown and his deputy, William P. MacCracken, drafted legislation granting the postmaster general broad

authority in the awarding of mail contracts. Congress had approved the administration's bill, known as the McNary-Watres Act, in 1930. Black's investigators found that, shortly after the bill's approval, Brown and MacCracken invited airline chiefs to Washington, many of whom were

personal friends, and awarded them air mail contracts without a formal bidding process. Brown and MacCraken held stocks of several corporations that directly benefited from these contracts. Reporters later dubbed the meeting the "Spoils Conference.")

***MacCracken still refused to cooperate and permitted some documents to be removed from his office and destroyed. The Senate authorized the sergeant at arms to arrest MacCracken and three others, and to impound their papers and correspondence.***