The Box - Marc Levinson [4]
Roger Horowitz and Christopher T. Baer, of the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, suggested files I would never have thought to investigate in the archives of the Penn Central railroad. Beth Posner of the City University of New York Graduate Center located much obscure material for me. I also drew on resources from the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley, the Library of Congress, the Cornell University library system, the New York Public Library, and the Seattle Public Library, and I wish to record my appreciation for their assistance.
The oral histories prepared for the Smithsonian by Arthur Donovan, professor emeritus at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and the late Andrew Gibson are an important source for any researcher on this subject, and Professor Donovan also pointed me to records on container standards. Marilyn Sandifur, Midori Tabata, Jerome Battle, and Mike Beritzhoff of the Port of Oakland were kind enough to guide me around the port and bring my knowledge of terminal management up to date. I owe a particular debt to Jim Doig, who allowed me to use material (now in the New Jersey State Archives) that he compiled in preparing his masterful book on the Port of New York Authority, and to Les Harlander, whose files on the negotiation of container standards are the major source for chapter 7.
A number of people read portions of the manuscript, caught embarrassing errors, pointed me to additional sources, and provided valuable comments. I especially wish to thank Jim Doig, Joshua Freeman, Vincent Grey, Les Harlander, Thomas Kessner, Nelson Lichtenstein, Kathleen McCarthy, Bruce Nelson, and Judith Stein. The material in chapter 5 was presented to the Business History Conference, several of whose members provided insights and suggestions. Portions of chapter 5 appeared in Business History Review,whose anonymous referees made extremely helpful suggestions, and the referees who reviewed the manuscript for Princeton University Press did much to improve it. I would also like to thank my editors at Princeton University Press, Lauren Lepow, who did a superb job of copyediting, and Tim Sullivan, who enthusiastically shared my vision of this book and my belief that the container really did change the world.
August 2005
Chapter 1
The World the Box Made
On April 26, 1956, a crane lifted fifty-eight aluminum truck bodies aboard an aging tanker ship moored in Newark, New Jersey. Five days later, the Ideal-X sailed into Houston, where fifty-eight trucks waited to take on the metal boxes and haul them to their destinations. Such was the beginning of a revolution.
Decades later, when enormous trailer trucks rule the highways and trains hauling nothing but stacks of boxes rumble through the night, it is hard to fathom just how much the container has changed the world. In 1956, China was not the world’s workshop. It was not routine for shoppers to find Brazilian shoes and Mexican vacuum cleaners in stores in the middle of Kansas. Japanese families did not eat beef from cattle raised in Wyoming, and French clothing designers did not have their exclusive apparel cut and sewn in Turkey or Vietnam. Before the container, transporting goods was expensive—so expensive that it did not pay to ship many things halfway across the country, much less halfway around the world.
What is it about the container that is so important? Surely not the thing itself. A soulless aluminum or steel box held together with welds and rivets, with a wooden floor and two enormous doors at one end: the standard container has all the romance of a tin can. The value of this utilitarian