COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE WARREN G. MAGNUSON, Washington, Chairman JOHN O. PASTORE, Rhode Island SAM J. ERVIN, JR., North Carolina STROM THURMOND, South Carolina JOHN W. BRICKER, Ohio ANDREW F. SCHOEPPEL, Kansas JOHN MARSHALL BUTLER, Maryland WILLIAM A. PURTELL, Connecticut EDWARD JARRETT, Clerk BERTRAM WISSMAN, Assistant Clerk NOMINATION OF ROSS RIZLEY TO CIVIL AERONAUTICS BOARD WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1955 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10 a. m., in room G-16, United States Capitol, Senator Warren G. Magnuson, presiding. Present: Senators Pastore, Monroney, Daniel, Bible, Bricker, Schoeppel, Purtell, and Payne. The CHAIRMAN. I think the committee can come to order. I will tell the members we have a lot of business here this morning, and the first matter is the nomination of Mr. Ross Rizley to be a member of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Congressman, you are here. If you will come up, we will be glad to hear from you. I think the members all have the Congressman's "biological" sketch. Senator PURTELL. I would like to see it. (The biographical sketch is as follows:) BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF Ross RIZLEY (OKLAHOMA) Oklahoma address: Guymon, Okla. Washington address: 3901 Tunlaw Road NW. Born July 5, 1892, near Beaver, Okla. Father: Robert M. Rizley, born in West Fork, Ark.; moved to Kansas and settled in what is now the Panhandle of Oklahoma in 1887; a farmer; died in 1921 near Beaver, Okla. Mother: Arabella McCown, born in Ill.; moved to Kansas with her parents in 1880; died in 1902 near Beaver, Okla. Education: Oklahoma public schools; University of Kansas City, Mo.; degree, LLB, University of Kansas City, Mo., 1915; legal fraternity, Phi Alpha Delta. Practice: Admitted to Missouri Bar, December 1914; admitted to Oklahoma State Bar, 1915; established law practice in Beaver, Okla., July 1915; elected County attorney at Beaver County, 1918, resigned to move to Guymon, Okla., February 1, 1920; admitted to practice, Supreme Court of Oklahoma; United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, Circuit Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit, United States Supreme Court since 1929; practiced law actively in Oklahoma since admission in 1915 except while a Member of Congress and since returning to Washington in March of 1953; senior member of the law firm of Rizley, Tryon & Sweet; member of the Oklahoma State Senate, First District of Oklahoma, for 4 years; city attorney of Guymon, Okla. for 6 years; law practice, general. Marital: Married Ruby E. Seal, June 1916. Children: Elaine Rizley Camp, Texhoma, Okla., graduate of Oklahoma City University; Hortense Rizley Barrere, Hollywood, Calif; Quentin Rizley, Oklahoma A. & M. College, employed by Northern Natural Gas Co., Hooker, Okla.; Robert S. Rizley, B. A. degree, Oklahoma City University, LLB degree, University of Michigan, assistant United States district attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma at Tulsa; LaMoyne Rizley Cox, Houston, Tex.; Max D. Rizley, A. B. degree, University of Oklahoma, student, law department, George Washington University; Jerry Rizley, in the armed services, now stationed in Hawaii. Lodge: A. F. & A. M.; Consistory, Guthrie, Okla., Shrine, Oklahoma City. Religion: Protestant, Methodist. Clubs: Guymon Country Club; Congressional Club, Washington, D. C. Member of Congress, Eighth Congressional District of Oklahoma, 1941 to 1948, inclusive. Solicitor, Post Office Department, March 15 to December 15, 1953. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, December 16, 1953, to December 16, 1954. Present employment: Special legal consultant to the Postmaster General. The CHAIRMAN. He is well known because some of us served with Mr. Rizley in the House of Representatives and the committee will be glad to hear anything you have to say, and if you want to enlarge on the matter that is before the committee or make any further statement, I think the members have some questions they would like to ask you regarding the policy matters of the Board which you are recommended for, and I want to assure you that when these questions are asked they are on policy matters and they are nothing personal. There is nothing personal to the questions at all. Mr. RIZLEY. I understand that. Mr. Chairman, I certainly do not have any prepared statement. I do not have any further statement other than the "obituary" that you have in front of you. The CHAIRMAN. Well, it is a long one, but it is very complete. Now since you left Congress, Mr. Rizley, you have, I believe, served since the advent of the Eisenhower administration in some official capacity in that administration. Mr. RIZLEY. That is correct, Mr. Chairman, I was Solicitor for the Post Office Department from March until December of 1953. I went from the Post Office Department up to the Department of Agriculture and was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture from December 16, 1953 until December 16, 1954. For a few weeks, up until last Friday, I have been doing some special legal work for the Postmaster General down at the Post Office Department. The CHAIRMAN. In your capacity in the Post Office Department, did you have any occasion to deal with the question of airmail rates or airmail subsidies? Mr. RIZLEY. Yes, to a limited extend during the time I was there. The CHAIRMAN. Of course, the appropriations were switched from the Post Office Department to the CAB. Mr. RIZLEY. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Was that during your tenure there or prior to it? Mr. RIZLEY. Yes, it was during my tenure down there that the new order went into effect in which the subsidies were transferred from the Post Office Department to the Civil Aeronautics Board. The CHAIRMAN. And did you have any part in that recommendation? Mr. RIZLEY. Yes, I did. The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that has been working out better from your experience than the original, having the Post Office Department apply for it? Mr. RIZLEY. We think it is better. The Board goes before Congress now and justifies the appropriation for it. I believe it is advantageous. The CHAIRMAN. And if you were made a member of the Board you would have some experience in the matter of the subsidies in the airmail rates? Mr. RIZLEY. That is right, to that extent. I was also there whenmaybe I should not talk about this-when we initiated the first experiment on putting the surface mail in the air also. The CHAIRMAN. I might say, as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I think it has been working well for us because we have a chance now to look directly at this question of dollars and cents subsidies, the question of having it intermingled with other departments. Mr. RIZLEY. That was one of the moving things. I joined in the recommendation of General Summerfield. The CHAIRMAN. Does the Board have anything to do, if you know, with the question of the placement of airmail or do they just make recommendations to the Post Office Department? Mr. RIZLEY. They just made recommendations to the Post Office Department during the time I was there. The CHAIRMAN. How long has that new experiment on the placing of airmail been in effect? Mr. RIZLEY. That went into effect, as I recall now, in the late summer of 1953. I do not remember the exact date. The CHAIRMAN. Is it saving any money for the Government? Mr. RIZLEY. The Post Office Department tells me it is. The CHAIRMAN. It is saving money? Mr. RIZLEY. That is right. The CHAIRMAN. Is it expediting delivery? Mr. RIZLEY. They say it expedites delivery and it is saving some money. That statement is based entirely upon information that I have received from the Post Office Department. The CHAIRMAN. Do you have any questions, Senator Monroney? Senator MONRONEY. Well, I have known Mr. Rizley for many, many years from the time he was The CHAIRMAN. I might state this before you start. The slips are in from both Senators from Oklahoma recommending. Senator MONRONEY. I have known Mr. Rizley for many, many years, from the time that he was the lone Republican in the Oklahoma State Senate. I thought it was an ideal situation in the State senate. He enjoyed the confidence and esteem of every member of the Oklahoma State Senate, and I had the privilege of serving with him in the House where I think one time in those years we happened to vote together. It must have been a mistake on one of our parts. Mr. RIZLEY. I had forgotten that one time, Senator. Senator MONRONEY. But I have never known a man that I respected more personally or felt greater confidence in his ability and integrity. The CHAIRMAN. I might ask this question as long as you are on Oklahoma. I noticed the one Democratic member of the Board is from Oklahoma, too. Senator MONRONEY. I hope nobody will hold that against Mr. Rizley that we have two members, at least for a while, on the CAB. I am interested, of course, in the relationship of an expanding aviation industry. I think the reading of the Civil Aeronautics Act will reveal that we did not intend for it to be a static or a shrinking industry, and the Board is the arm of Congress and not just voting their own personal feelings in this thing. The act, if properly followed, would give us an expanding aviation industry. Mr. RIZLEY. I agree with that statement, Senator. I understand well that the Board is an arm of the Congress, and as I understand the very purposes of the act, that is one of the things they are supposed to look into and try to do, expand the industry, and, of course, take care of national defense, and also handle the matter of the carriage of the mails. Senator MONRONEY. I am very glad you were a party to the experiment of carrying first-class mail by air. On many of the lines which we now have to heavily subsidize, that mail could be put on those lines at no additional net most to the Government and would speed up the delivery of the first-class mail, particularly where rail connections are bad or slow or no longer exist. Mr. RIZLEY. That was the thinking behind the recommendation that was made to try it out as an experiment. There are some legal entanglements, as you well know, in connection with that. We understood those. I think I wrote an opinion for the Postmaster General to the effect that I believed at least for experimental purposes that we could take that step. Senator MONRONEY. And in an expanding industry you would not feel that it would necessarily be limited to the high density traffic areas and serve only those areas to the exclusion of or the shrinking of services to smaller places who have difficult transportation problems, if this air service is not supplied. Mr. RIZLEY. Yes; in all proper cases where it was not too big a strain on the economy, I naturally would be quite interested in getting some service out in some of the smaller places, as you well know. Senator MONRONEY. You, yourself, came from Guymon, Okla., which is a little hard to get to almost any way except by air. Mr. RIZLEY. I would not say that. We have the main line of the Rock Island through Guymon that goes direct to Los Angeles. Senator MONRONEY. You would not have any preconceived concept as to the enlargement of services which reach both the large and small communities for services? Mr. RIZLEY. I would not, that is right. Senator MONRONEY. We have fewer trunklines today in existence, in 1955, than we had in 1938. I am not trying to put you on the spot or anything like that. Mr. RIZLEY. Well, I do not think I knew that. Senator MONRONEY. There are fewer. There have been consolidations and mergers and all which give us fewer trunklines than we have. Of course, this does not count the feeder lines which serve a specific area. Instead of expanding in the competitive way, while there is existing competiton among themselves within the trunklines today for certain hauls, there hase been no new entry into the trunklines since the "grandfather" clause converted those then in existence into permanent certification for trunkline service. I wondered if you had any preconceived ideas if the status quo was absolutely necessary to be maintained and new entry to be discouraged. Mr. RIZLEY. Well, Senator, I have not any preconceived notions or ideas about that. Of course, as you well know, I have always been pretty strong for free enterprise and proper competition. I think |