July 1934

 

 

“1934: Summer Successes"

 Pan American Airways poster by Kenneth Thompson, NASM

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-media/NASM-7338E8F574A92_001

 

July 1934 proved to be a great inflection point, marking future successes for Pan American Airways in terms of its investor confidence, as well as expanding its business opportunities.

A Pan Am milestone

The Board of directors of Pan Am authorized a dividend of 25 cents a share, payable August 1, 1934. This marked the very first distribution to stockholders by the company since the founding of Pan Am seven years earlier in 1927.

New Contract

Also in the month of July '34  Pan American and the Railway Express Agency signed a contract to form new international shipping services. By August, Pan Am began to offer door-to-door delivery service to the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America with the cooperation of the Railway Express Agency air division from points all over the U.S.

On August 5, 1934, Reginald Cleveland of The New York Times reported:

"More than a ton of merchandise of many kinds, shipped from about 50 cities in the United States, will be delivered to every country south of the Rio Grande on the first flight next Tuesday of air express under the new simple waybill arrangement worked out by Pan American Airways and the air division of the Railway Express Agency. Packages that leave the Pacific Coast tomorrow morning over the routes of United Air Lines will be in flight over the Caribbean [via Pan Am] on Wednesday and be delivered in Brazil or Peru three days later."

By November 1934, the system was working so smoothly that a pair of porcupines were successfully shipped from the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil. Arriving after a seven-day, 4500 mile trip from Manaus, they were delivered to the customs division of the Railway Express Agency on 10th Avenue in New York, for a collector of "zoological novelties."

Sources:
Althea "Gerry" Lister notes (July 1934) .

"Amazon Porcupines Last Word in Pets," The New York Times, November 14, 1934, p. 23.

"Contact" by Reginald Cleveland, The New York Times, August 5, 1934, p. XX9.

 

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