Historical higher fares for overweight passengers

I've seen some of the articles about overweight passengers having to pay higher fares to fly, but the ones I'd read had given me the impression that this was some sort of new idea. Imagine my surprise while reading Anita Loos' excellent Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which mentions at the beginning of Chapter Six that Mr. Eisman "decided not to bring them [his starving relatives in Berlin] to America because there was not one of his starving relatives who could travel on a railroad ticket without paying excess fare for overweight."