The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

by Marc Levinson

16. The formal committee statement is in “Report of the Coast Labor Relations Committee to the Longshore, Ship Clerks and Walking Bosses Caucus,” March 13–15, 1956, in ILA District 1 Files, Collection 5261, Box 1, Folder “Pacific Coast Experience.”

  17. Herb Mills, “The San Francisco Waterfront—Labor/Management Relations: On the Ships and Docks. Part One: ‘The Good Old Days’ “(Berkeley, 1978), p. 21; Fairley, Facing Mechanization, p. 48; Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 73–83.

  18. Jennifer Marie Winter, “Thirty Years of Collective Bargaining: Joseph Paul St. Sure, Management Labor Negotiator 1902–1966” (M.A. thesis, California State University at Sacramento, 1991), chap. 4. In one well-known incident, the permanent labor arbitrator in the port of San Francisco was called to a ship to deal with a safety grievance and found only four workers on the job, sitting in the hold, drinking coffee. The rest of their gang, he was informed, had gone to a ball game and would come to work at midnight. See Larrowe, Harry Bridges, p. 352. Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 84–88; ILWU, “Coast Labor Relations Committee Report,” October 15, 1957.

  19. Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 87–89; Sidney Roger, “A Liberal Journalist on the Air and on the Waterfront,” interview by Julie Shearer (Berkeley, 1998), p. 616.

  20. Fairley, Facing Mechanization, p. 64, discussed how the six-hour day was “perverted” by subsequent practices. For details on the vote, see Hart-man, Collective Bargaining, p. 91. The leadership’s difficulty convincing members on this issue is evident from a cartoon appearing in the Dispatcher, the ILA newspaper, showing a tombstone with the epitaph “Here Lies young Mr. Overtimer—Survived by a Loving Family Who Wishes He Had Worked Less and Lived Longer.” See ILWU, “Report of the Officers to the Thirteenth Biennial Convention,” Part I, April 6, 1959, p. 11.

  21. Longshoreman comment from interview with Bill Ward, then a member of ILWU Local 13 in Wilmington, CA, in ILWU-University of California at Berkeley Oral History Project. Warning about automation appears in ILWU, “Report… to the Thirteenth Biennial Convention,” p. 10. Comment about Bridges is from Roger, “A Liberal Journalist,” p. 187.

  22. For more on these talks, see Fairley, Facing Mechanization, pp. 103–104; Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 90–94; Larrowe, Harry Bridges, pp. 352–353. The full text of the ILA proposal is reprinted in Fairley, Facing Mechanization, p. 80.

  23. Fairley, Facing Mechanization, pp. 122–129; Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 96–97; Winter, “Thirty Years of Collective Bargaining,” chap. 5. Savings per hour calculated from data in Hartman, Collective Bargaining, p. 123.

  24. Fairley, Facing Mechanization, pp. 132–133, and Germain Bulcke, “Longshore Leader and ILWU-Pacific Maritime Association Arbitrator,” interview by Estolv Ethan Ward, (Berkeley, 1984), p. 66.

  25. Pacific Maritime Association and ILWU, “Memorandum of Agreement on Mechanization and Modernization,” October 18, 1960; Ross, “Waterfront Labor Response,” p. 413.

  26. The split among PMA members is detailed in Fairley, Facing Mechanization, p. 125, and Winter, “Thirty Years of Collective Bargaining,” chap. 5. Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 99–100, discusses opposition within the ILWU. Nearly one-third of San Francisco longshoremen were over age fifty-four, and only 11 percent were younger than thirty-five. See Robert W. Cherny, “Longshoremen of San Francisco Bay, 1849–1960,” in Da-vies et al., Dock Workers, 1:137.

  27. Hartman, Collective Bargaining, pp. 164–66.

  28. Ibid., pp. 124–44 and 272–279; Finlay, Work on the Waterfront, p. 65.

  29. Hartman quotation, Collective Bargaining, p. 150; on “Bridges loads,” see Larrowe, Harry Bridges, p. 356.

  30. Bridges statement in ILWU/PMA joint meeting, August 7, 1963, quoted in Hartman, Collective Bargaining, p. 147; arbitration award ibid., p. 148.

  31. Cost savings from ibid., p. 178; container statistics derived from ibid., pp. 160 and 270. Hartman estimates that the container accounted for about 4 percent of the total productivity increase between 1960 and 1963 and perhaps 7 or 8 percent by 1964 (p. 162).

  32. The Canadian version of the Mechanization and Modernization Agreement was signed November 21, 1960, just a month after the U.S. pact, and can be found in Jensen Papers, Accession 4067, Box 15. Kempton column is cited in Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, p. 261.

  33. Goldberg, “U.S. Longshoremen and Port Development,” 68–81; New York Shipping Association, “Progress Report 1959.” Gleason discusses his background in a July 31, 1981, interview with Debra Bernhardt, New Yorkers at Work Oral History Collection, Robert Wagner Labor Archive, New York University, Tape 44, although much of the information provided in this interview is unreliable. Peter Bell, interview by Debra Bernhardt, August 29, 1981, New Yorkers at Work Oral History Collection, Robert Wagner Labor Archive, New York University, Tape 1OA, discusses dissidents.

  34. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, Annual Report 1961–62, p. 16.

  35. Werner Bamberger, “Container Users Study Royalties,” NYT, November 24, 1960; “Container Board Set Up,” NYT, April 11, 1961; Panitz, “NY Dockers.” Longshore work hours were compiled by the New York Shipping Association, and a partial set can be found in the Vernon Jensen files; unfortunately, missing records make it impossible to reconstruct the full series of hours.

  36. Field comment appears in an undated memo to all ILA members in the Port of New York in ILA Files, Collection 55, Box 1, while demand for portwide seniority is in “Local No. 856, ILA, Proposals to 1962 Atlantic Coast District Wage Scale Committee and New York District Council,” n.d., Collection 55, Box 1.

  37. ILA, “Changes to Be Made in General Cargo Master Agreement,” June 13, 1962; New York Shipping Association, “Monetary Offer to International Longshoremen’s Association,” August 1, 1962; Memo from Walter L. Eisenberg, Ph.D., Economic Consultant, to Thomas W. Gleason, Chairman, ILA Negotiating Committee, Re Employer Proposals of August 1, 1962, n.d.; all in ILA Files, Collection 55, Box 1, Folder “Agreements, Negotiations, & Strikes 1961–63”; John P. Callahan, “Anastasia Balks at I.L.A. Demands,” NYT, July 17, 1962. Gleason speech to World Trade Club, September 10, 1962, quoted in Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, p. 269.

  38. Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, pp. 271–279.

  39. “Statement by the Mediators,” “Mediators’ Proposal,” and “Memorandum of Settlement,” mimeographed, January 20, 1963; Congressional Record, January 22, 1963, p. 700; Herald Tribune, September 12, 1963, p. 27.

  40. New York Department of Marine and Aviation, press release, January 23, 1961, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 357; Remarks by Mayor Robert F. Wagner, August 30 1962, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 457; Walter Hamshar, “Face-Lift for the Waterfront,” Herald Tribune, November 2, 1963; Minutes of New York City Council on Port Development and Promotion, November 18, 1963, Wagner Papers, Reel 40532, Frame 728; John P. Callahan, “Automation Fear Haunts Dockers,” NYT, June 9, 1964. Gleason comment in Jensen, Strife on the Waterfront, p. 301. The comments of Philip Ross also are relevant; by 1964, he argues, ILA leaders believed that the government would not tolerate further strikes, especially where featherbedding was involved. See Ross, “Waterfront Labor Response,” p. 404.

  41. James J. Reynolds, chairman, Theodore W. Kheel, and James J. Healy, “Recommendation on Manpower Utilization, Job Security and Other Disputed Issues for the Port of New York,” September 25, 1964. The ILA’s reaction appeared in the Brooklyn Longshoreman, September 1964. Jensen argues, probably correctly, that Gleason wanted to avoid a strike in his first negotiation as union president, but that he lacked the power to deliver; see Strife on the Waterfront, p. 307.

  42. On the Johnson administration’s concerns about labor settlements increasing inflation, see Edwin L. Dale Jr., “Johnson Voices Inflation Fear,” NYT, May 10, 1964. Quotation is from ILA Local 1814, “Shop Stewards Information Bulletin,” December 17, 1964, ILA Files, Collection 55, Box 1.

  43. George Panitz, “New York Pier Talks Hit Surprising Snag,” JOC, Januar
y 5, 1965; Gleason interview by Debra Bernhardt. The local-by-local tally on the vote was published in the Congressional Record, January 12, 1965, p. 582. The settlement in the South Atlantic and Gulf ports reduced minimum gang sizes there to eighteen; see George Home, “2 Southern Lines in Dockers’ Pact,” NYT, February 17, 1965. Despite the ILA agreement, local disputes over manning in Boston led Sea-Land to cancel plans to open service there; see Alan F. Schoedel, “Boston Talks in Deadlock,” JOC, June 29, 1966, “Boston Containership Handling Dispute Ends,” JOC, August 4, 1966, and “No Progress Reported in Boston Port Dispute,” JOC, November 22, 1966.

  44. The U.S. Department of Labor’s broad concerns are laid out in Norman G. Pauling, “Some Neglected Areas of Research on the Effects of Automation and Technological Change on Workers,” Journal of Business 37, no. 3 (1964): 261–273. Following an international conference in London in December 1962, the American Foundation on Automation and Employment published “A Report to the President of the United States,” April 30, 1963. The labor movement’s official view is in Arnold Beichman, “Facing Up to Automation’s Problems,” AFL-CIO Free Trade Union News 18, no. 2 (1963). On the UAW, see Reuben E. Slesinger, “The Pace of Automation: An American View,” Journal of Industrial Economics 6, no. 3 (1958): 254, esp. Kennedy’s comments were made at a press conference on February 14, 1962. For an interesting discussion of automation issues in the context of the printing industry, which presents many similar issues, see Michael Wallace and Arne L. Kalleberg, “Industrial Transformation and the Decline of Craft: The Decomposition of Skill in the Printing Industry, 1931–1978,” American Sociological Review 47, no. 3 (1982): 307–324.

  45. Ben B. Seligman, Most Notorious Victory: Man in an Age of Automation (New York, 1966), pp. 227 and 231; Juanita M. Kreps, Automation and Employment (New York, 1964), p. 20.

  46. Seligman, Most Notorious Victory, pp. 238–241; Benjamin S. Kirsh, Automation and Collective Bargaining (New York, 1964), pp. 175–176.

  47. Goldblatt, “Working Class Leader,” p. 860. Herod, Labor Geographies, offers a sophisticated discussion of these disputes revolving around the nature and location of longshore work. Concern about jobs lost to barge carriers, known as LASH (lighter aboard ship) vessels, appears in Longshore News, December 1969, p. 3. Critics of the ILWU and ILA agreements have made much of the routinization and “de-skilling” of longshore work due to containerization. See, for example, Herb Mills, “The Men along the Shore,” California Living, September 1980. Containerization undoubtedly eliminated the need for some skills but greatly increased the need for others. Sea-Land, as one example, employed almost twice as many mechanics at Port Elizabeth in 1980 as were employed in the entire Port of New York two decades earlier. David J. Tolan, interview by Debra Bernhardt, August 1, 1980, New Yorkers at Work Oral History Collection, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, Tape 123. See also Finlay, Work on the Waterfront, pp. 20, 121.

  48. Bell interview; Finlay, Work on the Waterfront, pp. 174–176; Roger, “A Liberal Journalist,” p. 569. Stanley Aronowitz, From the Ashes of the Old: American Labor and America’s Future (Boston, 1998), p. 31, blames the ILWU and the ILA for creating a situation in which longshoremen’s sons “are obliged to seek work in low-wage, nonunion retail and service jobs which typically pay half of what factory and transportation jobs pay,” under the rather romantic assumption that greater union resistance would have kept the docks as they were.

  Chapter 7

  Setting the Standard

  Many of the source materials for chapter 7 were obtained from private sources and may not be available in public archives.

  1. European container census of 1955 reported in Containers 7, no. 13 (1955): 9; “Grace Initiates Seatainer Service,” Marine Engineering/Log (February 1960), p. 56. Marine Steel advertisement is in International Cargo Handling Coordination Association, “Containerization Symposium Proceedings, New York City June 15, 1955,” p. 3. Figures on the U.S. container fleet are from a Reynolds Metals Co. study cited in John G. Shott, Progress in Piggyback and Containerization (Washington, DC, 1961), p. 11.

  2. Douglas J. Puffert, “The Standardization of Track Gauge on North American Railways, 1830–1890,” Journal of Economic History 60, no. 4 (2000): 933–960, and “Path Dependence in Spatial Networks: The Standardization of Railway Track Gauge,” Explorations in Economic History 39 (2002): 282–314.

  3. Puffert, “Path Dependence,” p. 286; A. T. Kearney & Co., “An Evaluation of the 35’ Container Size as a Major Factor in Sea-Land’s Growth,” typescript, 1967; Weldon, “Cargo Containerization”; “Grace Initiates Seatainer Service,” Marine Engineering/Log (February 1960), p. 56.

  4. On “lock-in,” see W. Brian Arthur, Increasing Returns and Path Dependence in the Economy (Ann Arbor, 1994), chap. 2. There is an extensive literature exploring the economic costs of technological incompatibilities; see especially Joseph Farrell and Garth Saloner, “Installed Base and Compatibility: Innovation, Product Preannouncements, and Predation,” American Economic Review 76, no. 5 (1986): 940–955; Michael L. Katz and Carl Shapiro, “Systems Competition and Network Effects,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 2 (1994): 93–115; and S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, “Network Externality: An Uncommon Tragedy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 2 (1994): 133–150.

  5. Minutes of November 18, 1958, meeting of Committee on Standardization of Van Container Dimensions (hereafter Marad Dimensions Committee).

  6. Minutes of November 19, 1958, meeting of Committee on Construction and Fittings (hereafter Marad Construction Committee); author’s telephone interview with Vincent Grey, May 1, 2005.

  7. Minutes of MH-5 Van Container Subcommittee, February 25, 1959.

  8. Marad Dimensions Committee, December 9, 1958; Minutes of MH-5 Van Container Subcommittee, February 25, 1959.

  9. On railroads’ capacities, see Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton, Shoreside Facilities, p. 8, while railroad standardization is treated in John G. Shott, Piggyback and the Future of Freight Transportation (Washington, DC, 1960), p. 33, and Progress in Piggyback, p. 19. Concerning Bull Line, see F. M. McCarthy, “Aspects on Containers,” presented to Marad Construction Committee, December 10, 1958. Bull Line’s choice of sizes is justified in International Cargo Handling Coordination Association, “Containerization Symposium Proceedings,” p. 19.

  10. Minutes of Marad Dimensions Committee, April 16, 1959; letter, Ralph B. Dewey, Pacific American Steamship Association, to L. C. Hoffman, Marad, May 25, 1959; memorandum to various steamship company officials from George Wauchope, Committee of American Steamship Lines, June 16, 1959; minutes of Marad Dimensions Committee, June 24, 1959. Matson’s position on height is laid out in a “Report on why the standard container height and regional supplementary standard van container lengths, as proposed by the ASA Sectional Committee MH5, should not be approved,” submitted to Pacific American Steamship Association, February 15, 1960; Edward A. Morrow, “Line Chides I.C.C. on Rate Policies,” NYT, April 17, 1960.

  11. Letter, W. H. Reich, chairman, Marad/Industry Container Standardization Committee on Construction and Fittings, to L. C. Hoffman, Marad, June, 25, 1959.

  12. Morris Forgash, “Transport Revolution at the Last Frontier—The Thought Barrier,” in Revolution in Transportation, ed. Karl M. Ruppenthal (Stanford, 1960), p. 59; “Uniformity Urged in Big Containers,” NYT, September 12, 1959.

  13. Minutes of MH-5 Size Task Force, September 16, 1959. See testimony of Les Harlander to the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, November, 1967. For comments on Hall, see Vince Grey, “Setting Standards: A Phenomenal Success Story,” in Jack Latimer, Friendship among Equals (Geneva, 1997), p. 40. Pan-Atlantic had not been a participant in the standardization process until that point; Matson had been, but was not notified of the September 16 meeting until the previous day and did not attend; letter of Robert Tate, Matson, to J. M. Gilbreth, Van Container Subcommittee, September 15, 1959. On Hall’s interest in preferred numbers, see MH-5
Executive Committee, minutes, May 4, 1961.

  14. Ralph B. Dewey, Pacific American Steamship Association, to Herbert H. Hall, November 12, 1959; Dewey to L. C. Hoffman, Marad, November 12, 1959; Hoffman to Dewey, n.d.; Marad Dimensions Committee, January 14, 1960; Pacific American Steamship Association, minutes of special containerization committee, February 8, 1960; Dewey letter and statement to MH-5 committee, February 25, 1960. The vote is given in a letter from Hall to Dewey, June 20, 1961. Grace Line and American President Lines were so concerned by the government’s threat not to fund nonstandard containerships that they amended pending application for construction subsidies so that their proposed ships would handle 20-foot containers rather than 17-footers, which Grace was already using.

  15. Letter from George C. Finster, standards manager, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, to members of MH-5 committee, June 29, 1960; letter, George Wauchope to Committee of American Steamship Lines members, July 26, 1960; Pacific American Steamship Association, minutes of containerization committee, August 4, 1960; “U.S. Body Enters Container Field,” NYT, April 28, 1961. For Hall’s view on “modular” sizes, see MH-5 committee minutes, June 6, 1961. On the procedures by which the standards were deemed to have been approved, see the testimony of Fred Muller Jr., U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Cargo Container Dimensions, November 16, 1967. The standards were codified as ASA MH5.1–1961. Federal Maritime Board and Maritime Administration press release NR 61–35, April 28, 1961.

  16. MH-5 minutes, June 6, 1961.

  17. Tineke M. Egyedi, “The Standardized Container: Gateway Technologies in Cargo Transportation,” Working Paper, Delft University of Technology, 2000.

  18. Containers, no. 30 (December 1963): 26; Egyedi, “The Standardized Container”; “Is Container Standardization Here?” Via—Port of New York, Special Issue: Transatlantic Transport Preview (1965), p. 28.

  19. Cost estimate appears in “Memorandum of Comment” by John J. Clutz, Association of American Railroads, to MH-5 Van Container Subcommittee #3, December 13, 1961.