In 1909, they had received a contract from the government for a machine for the use of the Signal Service. The price was fixed at $25,000, but a bonus of $2500 was to be paid for every mile above forty miles an hour made by the machine on its trial trip. That bonus looked big to the Wrights, but it cost the cause of aviation many times its face value in the congressional disfavour it caused. Aviation was then in its infancy in the United States. Every man in Congress wanted to see the flights. But Fort Myer, whose parade was to be the testing ground, was fully fourteen miles from the Capitol, and reached only most inconveniently from Washington by trolley, or most expensively by carriage or automobile. Day after day members of the House and Senate made the long journey across the Potomac. Time and again they journeyed back without even a sight of the flyer in the hangar. One after another little flaws discovered in the machine led the aviators to postpone their flight. Investigating statesmen who thought that their position justified them in seeking special privileges were brusquely turned away by the military guard. The dusk of many a summer's night saw thousands of disappointed sightseers tramping the long road back to Washington. The climax came when on a clear but breezy day Wilbur Wright announced that the machine was in perfect condition and could meet its tests readily, but that in order to win a bigger bonus, he would postpone the flight for a day with less wind. All over Washington the threat was heard that night that Congress would vote no more money for aviation, and whether or not the incident was the cause, the sequence was that the American Congress was, until the menace of war with Germany in 1916, the most niggardly of all legislative bodies in its treatment of the flying corps. When the Wrights did finally fly they made a triumphant flight before twelve thousand spectators. The test involved crossing the Potomac, going down its north side to Alexandria, and then back to Fort Myer. Ringing cheers and the crashing strains of the military band greeted the return of the aviator, but oblivious to the enthusiasm Wilbur Wright stood beside his machine with pencil and pad computing his bonus. It figured up to five thousand dollars, and the reporters chronicled that the Wrights knew well the difference between solid coin and the bubble of reputation.
[Illustration: Wright Glider.]
But this seemingly cold indifference to fame and single-minded concentration on the business of flying on the part of the Wrights was in fact of the utmost value to aviation as an art and a science. They were pioneers and successful ones. Their example was heeded by others in the business. In every way they sought to discourage that wild reaching after public favour and notoriety that led aviators to attempt reckless feats, and often sacrifice their lives in a foolish effort to astonish an audience. No one ever heard of either of the Wright brothers "looping-the-loop," doing a "demon glide," or in any other fashion reducing the profession of aviation to the level of a circus. In a time when brave and skilful aviators, with a mistaken idea of the ethics of their calling, were appealing to sensation lovers by the practice of dare-devil feats, the Wrights with admirable common sense and dignity stood sturdily against any such degradation of the aviator's art. In this position they were joined by Glenn Curtis, and the influence of the three was beginning to be shown in the reduced number of lives sacrificed in these follies when the Great War broke upon the world and gave to aviation its greatest opportunity. The world will hope nevertheless that after that war shall end the effort to adapt the airplane to the ends of peace will be no less earnest and persistent than have been the methods by which it has been made a most serviceable auxiliary of war.
In July, 1915, Collier's Weekly published an interview with Orville Wright in which that man, ordinarily of few words, set up some interesting theories upon the future of airplanes.
"The greatest use of the airplane to date," said Mr. Wright, "has been as a tremendously big factor of modern warfare. But--
"The greatest use of the airplane eventually will be to prevent war.
"Some day there will be neither war nor rumours of war, and the reason may be flying machines.
"It sounds paradoxical. We are building airplanes to use in time of war, and will continue to build them for war. We think of war and we think of airplanes. Later on, perhaps, we shall think of airplanes in connection with the wisdom of keeping out of war.
"The airplane will prevent war by making it too expensive, too slow, too difficult, too long drawn out--in brief, by making the cost prohibitive.
