Ghost Port

Boston's old, famed harbor lies closer to the Atlantic convoy routes than any U.S. shipping center, 200 miles nearer to Europe than any other big U.S. seaport. Boston Harbor is deep. Railheads are at water's edge. There are plenty of piers, cranes, warehouses for handling cargoes; plenty of trained labor. But last week, while other Atlantic ports were chockablock with war supplies, Boston docks and warehouses were empty.* The nation's handiest harbor on the Eastern Seaboard was a ghost port.

Explanations crusted the situation like barnacles on a foul bottom. The past record of the port was as smelly as its long, cobblestoned Fish Pier. Port officials said that union-labor rules delayed shiploading and unloading operations. A.F. of L. longshoremen refused to work nights. Union rules required double-time wages ($3.60 an hour) for work during meal hours: breakfast, 5 a.m.--8 a.m.; dinner, 5 p.m.--7 p.m. Because of a "lapse system" which allowed 20-minute rest periods, one operator figures that an average of only 17 out of a 20-man stevedore gang were ever on a job steadily. "Stand-bys," men whose jobs had been taken over by machinery in the middle of the job, had to be paid even though all they did was squat on the wharf and fish. Wrathful shippers took their business to businesslike harbors.

Labor alone was not to blame. Boston was cursed with absentee ownership. Only one deep-sea shipowner was left in the New England city that once was the greatest port on the North American continent. Labor troubles, management troubles had to be handled laboriously through agents and middlemen. No major trunk railroads gave the port a tinker's damn.

Boston's shipping business, going fast, sank sickeningly when war broke out in December. About all that was left was the South American shipping which the port had managed to hold. Coastwise ships were swept from the harbor, sold to the Government or turned into more profitable deep-sea routes. The Government even cast covetous eyes on the oil tankers that served Boston, until officials realized that if they took too many, New England would have to shut down its industrial plants.

The port never did get any important British Lend-Lease shipments to handle. Russian Lend-Lease cargoes were loaded at Boston only for a brief space. Complaining of labor conditions, mismanagement, congestion in the railroad yards, the Russians announced in a huff last January that they were going to pull out. Tall, handsome Richard Parkhurst, chairman of the Boston Port Authority, made mighty efforts, even won important concessions from the longshoremen, carried his pleas to Washington--to no avail. Russian officials took their business to other harbors, began complaining there just as loudly.

Last week Boston heard rumors that it was going to lose its South American shipping.

There was one promise of hope. An Army colonel in Boston, suddenly reckless with information, announced that Boston was to be a big embarkation point for troops and supplies. But the Army's business was only for the duration. Young Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, onetime newsboy, went into conferences with rail, shipping, port and labor officials to ponder Boston's future. Port Chairman Parkhurst saw the future very clearly, unless Boston woke up and did something: "a sort of backwater place of little commercial importance."

*By April 1, freight cars in Boston had dwindled to 300, fewer even than rolled into the yard of little neighbor Portland, Me.

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