Title:
The Box – How the Shipping Container Made the World
Smaller and the World Economy Bigger
Author:
Marc Levinson
Publisher:
Princeton University Press, 2006 (First)
ISBN:
9780691123240
Pages:
376
The
period after the death of Soviet Union in the early 1990s is taken to be the
time globalization took birth. Though historians would propose the early 19th
century in
the aftermath of Napoleonic wars, or even the late 16th century after the
settling
of the New
World
as the contenders to the start of globalization, there is no denying that the
last decade of the last century saw tremendous improvement in international
trade. Whereas raw materials came in one direction and end products travelled
the other in earlier times, that pattern
became increasingly blurred. Manufacturers
could easily source intermediate products from far off places and that too, just in time. The Barbie Doll was made entirely in the U.S. earlier. Now the doll is
manufactured in China, with clothes from
Korea, hair
from the U.S., colour from Japan and likewise. In this catalog of the tremendous
pace of manufacturing in the era of globalization, one thing stands apart as
the prime factor in helping achieve the goals – cheap and fast transport of cargo from one
corner of the world to the other in containers. Hardly 50 years before, nobody
had used it, while now, those who don’t use it is a nobody. Marc Levinson tells the
thrilling story of containers from its conceptual stages to the modern era. The
style is crisp and witty. With extensively researched data on cargo, Levinson has made an excellent work that
presents the complexities of international trade simplified as to be enjoyable
by general readers as well. The author is an economist in New York and has
authored three books earlier. He had associated with leading economics
publications like the Economist.
As
an introduction, Levinson presents the sorry plight of dock workers and the
enormous time and money wasted in transporting goods from one end of the globe
to the other. A ship normally carries tens of thousands of discrete items in
one journey. In the pre-container
era, each of these items were separately packaged and stowed on board. This
evidently led to wastage of space,
which resulted in loss to the shipping company. As a result, manufacturers preferred to set up shop as near
to customers
as possible. Rapid industrialization seen after the Second World War
in the western countries is the result of this trend. As market dynamics shifted and low-cost, long-distance shipping was made feasible
with the use of containers,
employers got the upper
hand in bargaining with unions. If they proved too belligerent the factory
owners could relocate to a Third
World
country, where the labour costs were dead cheap and the transportation costs
were also low. In fact this factor contributed a great deal to the rise of
globalization which we now take for granted. Dock workers were a tough lot
before, in terms of the job
they were doing and also when they were assessed
on the personal level.
The longshoreman had difficulty in finding a daily job for loading and
unloading the ships. The work was hard, steady and not intellectually
challenging. Supply far exceeded demand which encouraged cronyism and bribery on the part of harbour
masters. Sometimes the workmen had to literally fight their way for a day’s work. With the advent of reforms,
such practices were curtailed and with the coming of containers such jobs were
effaced out of the industry
altogether.
Malcom (sic)
Purcell McLean was the man who turned pivotal in the development of containers.
Curiously he had no idea about shipping when he began his business of
transportation through trucks. He used containers for lorry transport, which
reduced the loading and unloading times. In a bid to expand his operations,
McLean transported entire trucks on board ships to save costs. This gradually
led to the containers themselves placed on the deck, which can be loaded to a
waiting truck
at the destination. McLean acquired shipping companies to try his novel ideas
and his Pan
Atlantic shipping line introduced the Sea-Land
service, which later became
a byname
for container freight. On April 26,
1956, a ship sailed from Port
Newark to Houston with containers, heralding a new era in the history of
maritime trade. However, the new device didn’t find favour with labour unions
that effectively ruled
the
Atlantic and Pacific costs of the
U.S., wringing concession after
concession from the shipping lines. Limitations of geography and traffic
congestion were
eating into the worthiness of New York’s ports, shifting the business to
New Jersey coast. Unions took a demanding line in negotiations with the
management in the general
atmosphere of New York’s declining
business and loss of jobs due to automation. Levinson paints
a gruesome picture of the dock environment in which unions exercised their will under the
always present threat of strike. In any industry, the management exploits the
workers till they are organized into unions. The tide then reverses, in which the power conferred by
collective bargaining constrain the management in no small measure.
On the west coast of the country, ILWU, the more pragmatic of the unions
reached a mechanization and modernization agreement with the ship lines in 1960, which was
realized by the employers
paying a huge sum of money in
the form of guaranteeing income of workers who stood to lose their jobs on the
account of automation and also to ensure sufficient funds for retirement of the
workers. The east coast workers also reached a similar agreement in the form of
guaranteed annual income. The chapter titled ‘Union Disunion’ presents a ring side view
of the dock labour environment in the U.S. during the 50s and 60s.
When
we look at the inventions that have since became
ubiquitous,
we tend to wonder at how the society could have lived without it, before it came into being.
Electricity is one such thing and judging from the book, containers also
deserve mention in that group. The entire shipping is now dominated by
containers, thanks to its inherent advantages like low cost and less time for
loading and unloading. However, Levinson presents a different story in the
first decade since the first ship sailed with containers in 1956. The size
of the box was
not standardized. This released a huge set of problems in the shipping arena that was still
smarting from its introduction. The cranes, trucks and rail cars used for
transporting one company’s containers couldn’t be used for containers of other ship
lines. Standards-making agencies like American
Standards Association (ASA) and International Standards Organization
(ISO) immediately entered the fray to make norms for sizing individual
containers. After hectic deliberations that involved countries from both sides
of the Atlantic, the world eventually settled on boxes having lengths in
multiples
of 10 feet, the most commonly used being 20 footers. As the standard war was
heating up American shipping,
Europe and Asia waited for finalization of it. So when the standards were
adopted, they quickly came
on the fray and derived maximum benefit out of it. Even now, the top six positions in
terms of world container traffic are occupied by Asian ports – Hong Kong,
Singapore, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Busan and Kaoshung. Containers
got a big boost in international shipping which helped ease the logical nightmares
faced by the U.S. military in Vietnam in 1956. Over a
period of a few months, the military was thoroughly convinced of the efficiency
of containers. Even with all this, it is ironic to learn that the father of
containerization, Malcom McLean died a bankrupt, having lost his money in
shipping after his plans were upset by geopolitics in the form of unexpected
falls and rallies of oil price. All the container ships around the world
sounded their whistles at the instant of McLean’s cremation as a mark of
respect.
The
book could have
done better with a few photographs that would add interest. Levinson sells his
ideas on containers with conviction, but some of the claims seem to be a little
too tall. He assigns the great increase in
international trade to the better conditions provided by containerization. This
is hardly the case. Apart from easing some of the bottlenecks that was
hindering trade expansion, containers were greatly affected by the oscillating
equations of global commerce and its pricing policies. Instead of asserting one
to be the direct offspring of the other, we can only grant that globalization
and containerization are
the two streams that merged to produce the revolution that we see today. The
book includes
a fine section of notes, a good bibliography and a thorough index.
This
book is highly recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
