The Great Lakes Slump

When the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, Mid westerners envisioned the shores of the Great Lakes becoming "America's fourth seacoast." Today that dream has all but sunk out of sight. Despite the seaway's direct route to the bustling ports of Europe and the Middle East, the Great Lakes ports from Duluth to Rochester are suffering through a depression that looks almost impossible to reverse.

International cargo trade moving in and out of the ports is averaging only half as much as last year, and two-thirds less than the record 8.6 million tons moved in 1971. Patrick J. Sullivan, secretary-treasurer of the Great Lakes district of the International Longshoremen's Association, asserts that less than one-third of the 7,000 longshoremen working lake docks have been close to adequately employed this year. "Last year," says P. George Bechtold, a Chicago terminal company official, "we had 53 vessels dock at our facility at Lake Calumet. You know how many we have had there this year? Zilch."

Worse, there are signs that the downward spiral is reinforcing itself. As fewer sailings are scheduled, shippers turn to other means--truck or rail--to move cargoes, and sailings decline even more. What happened? Like the rest of the economy, Great Lakes shipping is suffering from inflation, especially in the cost of fuel to power ships. Bad labor relations also have plagued Chicago docks. "The I.L.A.," fumes Bechtold, "will not work in the rain. If they look at a puddle and see a bubble, they will walk off the ship."

But longshoremen cannot be blamed for any of the worst problems, which are long-term and seem almost insoluble. The St. Lawrence Seaway has become virtually obsolete. Its locks are too small to let through the "super" ships (27-ft. draft or more) that move cargo most efficiently these days.

About the only hope for the Great Lakes is that long-divided dock workers, terminal operators and port authorities have formed an alliance to remedy some problems that are not rooted in the very nature of the seaway. They are asking the U.S. Maritime Administration for the same subsidies that are collected by the coastal shipping interests that compete with them. They also want moderation of the "Ship American" policy, which is mandated by the Merchant Marine Act of 1970.

This policy requires shippers to use U.S.-flag vessels to move varying percentages of certain cargoes--half of all goods shipped to the Soviet Union, for instance. But not a single U.S.-flag ship is left that is efficient enough for trans-ocean commerce and small enough to fit through the seaway locks--so the law in effect forbids many U.S. shippers to use the Great Lakes at all.

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