Country of Exiles

by William R. Leach

  76. Bharati Mukherjee, “Beyond Multiculturalism: Surviving the Nineties,” in Ishmael Reed, ed., MultiAmerica (New York: Viking, 1997), p. 454.

  77. Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current (New York: Viking, 1980), p. 352.

  78. Royce, The Philosophy of Loyalty, pp. 115–16. The full quote is:

  Now, in our country we do not want any muted hatred of sections. But we do want a hearty growth of provincial ideals. And we want this growth just for the sake of the growth of a more general and effective patriotism. We want the ideals of the various provinces of our country to be enriched and made definite, and then to be strongly represented in the government of the nation. For, I insist, it is not the sect, it is not the labor-union, it is not the political partisan organization, but it is the widely developed provincial loyalty which is the best mediator between the narrower interests of the individual and the larger patriotism of our nation.

  79. Wallace Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 72; Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), p. 22.

  80. Fei Xiaotong, a Chinese anthropologist who studied in the United States during World War II, praised Americans but lamented their indifference to the past, to place and memory. He was lonely all the while he lived in America during the forties. “American children,” he wrote in 1944,

  hear no stories about ghosts. They spend a dime in the drugstore to buy a Superman comic book.… Superman represents actual capabilities or future potential, while ghosts symbolize belief in and reverence for the accumulated past.… How could ghosts gain a foothold in American cities? People move about like the tide, unable to form permanent ties with places, still less with other people.… In a world without ghosts, life is free and easy. American eyes can gaze straight ahead. But still I think they lack something and I do not envy their lives.

  On Xiaotong, see R. David Arkush and Leo O. Lee, eds., Land Without Ghosts: Chinese Impressions of America from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 171–81.

  1. INTERMODAL HIGHWAYS AND GATEWAYS, VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE

  1. Eno Transportation Foundation, Transportation in America. A Statistical Analysis of Transportation in the United States, supplement to the 15th ed. (Landsdowne, Va.: Eno Transportation Foundation, 1998), p. 7. For truck lengths over a ten-year period, see Gerhardt Muller, Intermodal Freight Transportation (Landsdowne, Va.: Eno Transportation Foundation Inc., 1995, 3rd ed.), p. 70; and U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Federal Size Regulations for Commercial Motor Vehicles (Washington, D.C.: 1997), pp. 4–5. On maximum lengths in Arkansas in 1994 for tractor semi-trailers, see U.S. Department of Transportation, 1997 Comprehensive Truck Size and Weight Study, vol. 2, Issues and Background, Draft (Washington, D.C.: June 1997), tables II-3 and II-17.

  2. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), p. 18. For more recent discussions of this period, see William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963, 1990), pp. 726–92; Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations (New York: Touchstone Press, 1997), p. 51; Paul Krugman, Pop Internationalism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), and Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 4. Polanyi never argued, however, that a totally free market reigned in the nineteenth century or, for that matter, has ever reigned. For a similar position, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), pp. 573–74.

  3. Quoted in William Leach, Land of Desire (New York: Vintage, 1994), p. 356.

  4. Roads have long been viewed as radical interventions, usually connecting cities (although today they connect suburb to suburb more than they do city to city or suburb to city). See Robert Redfield, The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953), p. 56:

  It is the city that makes world-wide and conspicuous the self-conscious struggle to maintain a traditional ethos, as it is the city, in the first place, that traditional morality is attacked and broken down. The conflict on the religious or ethical level between city and country, urbanite and peasant, sophisticated mind and simple villager or tribesman, is an ancient and familiar theme.… In the Maya village of Chan Kom, to which my mind ever reverts in these connections, my good friend, a certain thoughtful villager, saw with dismay the coming of the highway that would bring the evils of the city to the peasant community his own leadership had built. Recoiling from the consequences he had not foreseen of an urbanization for which he had put forth great effort, he began to view the city as a source of moral evil. “With the road will come drunkenness, idleness, vice,” he said.

  5. I would like to thank Mary Furner for pointing this out to me. We greatly need a new history of transportation, but see, for a recent informative and general history, James E. Vance, Jr., Capturing the Horizon: The Historical Geography of Transportation Since the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). See also, for America in particular, George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1836 (New York, Rinehart, 1951); John Lauritz Larson, “ ‘Bind the Republic Together’: The National Union and the Struggle for a System of Internal Improvement,” Journal of American History 74 (Sept. 1987), 363–87; Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), esp. pp. 79–203; and Muller, Intermodal Freight Transportation, pp. 7–14.

  6. John Brinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 24–25. I have borrowed the distinction between “centrifugal” and “centripetal” roads from Jackson. Others, too, have adopted these distinctions; see especially Phil Patton, Open Roads: A Celebration of the American Highway (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986).

  7. Historian James Flink has argued that “the goal was to reorder society to accommodate increased automobile use and ownership, and therefore increased automobile production.” See James J. Flink, The Automobile Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 368–73; for similar analyses, see David James St. Clair, “Entrepreneurship and the American Automobile Industry” (unpublished diss., University of Utah, 1979), pp. 167–68; and Henry Moon, The Interstate Highway System (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers, 1994), pp. 1–21. For a different perspective, see Phil Patton, Open Roads; Tom Lewis, Divided Highways (New York: Viking, 1997); and, more recently, Fred Barnes, “In Praise of Highways,” Weekly Standard, April 27, 1998, 15–18. All three writers argue against the notion—held by Flink and others—that “the Road Gang” (or the “auto oligopoly,” plus gas and oil industries) played the major role in fostering the growth of the highways.

  8. Robert D. Yaro and Tony Hiss, A Region at Risk: The Third Regional Plan for the New York–New Jersey–Connecticut Metropolitan Area (New York: Island Press, 1996), p. 29.

  9. James H. Johnson (CEO of the Standish Group International, Inc., a specialist in electronic commerce), “Realities of the Virtual Enterprise,” an unpaginated advertisement, BusinessWeek, December 4, 1995.

  10. Wall Street Journal (henceforth WSJ), April 30, 1998, B4; Gus Welty, Railway Age, September 1996.

  11. U.S. Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, National Transportation Statistics 1997 (Washington, D.C.: 1997), pp. 6, 24, 33, 209. Interestingly, too, the number of private airports has increased from 10,461 in 1985 to 12,809 in 1995, while the number of public airports has declined from 5,858 in 1985 to 5,415 ten years later.

  12. “People in Alaska eat, sleep, are born, sometimes die on airplanes,” Ted Stevens, Senator from Alaska, said on floor of the Senate in 1996 (C-Span, Oct. 2, 1996). According to The Atlas of the New West, “airports capable of private jet landings” had a greater presence in the West after 1980 than did ranches or mining shafts” (William E. Riebsame, Gen
eral Editor, Atlas of the New West. A Project of the Center for the American West, University of Colorado at Boulder (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997, pp. 71–72). On “too many airports,” see Journal of Commerce, June 29, 1998, 8A.

  13. National Transportation Statistics 1997, p. 7; and U.S. Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Transportation Statistics Annual Report 1997 (Washington, D.C.: 1997), pp. 228–29.

  14. National Transportation Statistics 1997, p. 225; Rosalyn A. Wilson, Transportation in America 1997 (Landsowne, Va: Eno Transportation Foundation Inc., 1997), p. 9.

  15. On San Diego, see “U.S. Border Towns Suffer From post-Nafta Syndrome,” WSJ, August 28, 1998, pp. B1, B4; on Woodstock, Vermont, see “War Is Declared as Giant Trucks Invade Tiny Towns,” WSJ, September 16, 1998, pp. B1, B4.

  16. Interview with Don Lotz and Dimitri Rallis, port analysts, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, World Trade Center (N.Y.C.), April 20, 1998.

  17. The lengths of trucks, as well as their access to many highways and roads, was limited by the 1991 ISTEA legislation; see “Big Rigs Could Barrell Down Roads,” WSJ, June 16, 1997, B1. As this article indicates, states and cities frequently sought exemptions from the federal law.

  18. Anna Wilde Mathews, “Mr. and Mrs. Grimm Get a Load of Shrimp Cross Country, Fast,” WSJ, February 3, 1998, A1, A8.

  19. Phone interview with Thomas Klimek, transportation analyst, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Washington, D.C., May 18, 1998; see also U.S. Department of Transportation, 1997 Comprehensive Truck Size and Weight Study, vol. II, “Issues and Background,” draft (Washington, D.C.: 1997).

  20. On the number of truckers, see American Trucking Association, American Trucking Trends (Alexandria, Va.: ATA Statistics Department, 1997), pp. 2–5; on the government’s pledge, see WSJ, November 3, 1998, p. 1; and for an account of a “lost” trucker who drove down the wrong road and destroyed a footbridge on Saw Mill River Parkway in New York State, see Journal News, November 3, 1998, p. 2B.

  21. Transportation Statistics Annual Report 1997, p. 212.

  22. Port of Long Beach Annual Report 1996 (Long Beach, California), pp. 4–5.

  23. “Shifting Trade Routes Affect American Ports,” WSJ, September 16, 1996, A1; and “As U.S. Seaports Get Busier, Weak Point Is a Surprise: Railroads,” WSJ, September 19, 1996, A1, A14.

  24. On America’s decline as shipping power since WWII, see Muller, Intermodal Freight Transportation, pp. 32–33; on increase in international trade, see Transportation Statistics Annual Report 1997, p. 212.

  25. Tim Ferguson, “Imports Ahoy!,” Forbes 158:6 (September 9, 1996), 100–2; John Davies, “Skipping the Waves,” International Business 9:5 (May 1996), 26–28; and Tony Carding, “Looking Back Over Thirty Years in Ocean Transportation,” Intermodal Shipping, July 1995, 18–21.

  26. For this observation, see Tom Baldwin, “A Gigantic Ship Squeezes In,” Journal of Commerce, July 24, 1998, 1A, 8A.

  27. On July 29, 1998, the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee of the House of Representatives held a hearing on “The Needs of the U.S. Waterways Transportation System.” Nearly all those who testified invoked the Regina Maersk to illustrate the “competitive” challenge to American ports posed by megaships; see especially the testimony of Lillian Borrone, director of commerce at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; and John Arntzen, president, ACTA Maritime Development Corporation (transcript of testimony, in author’s possession, courtesy Ed Lee, staff of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation). On the Regina Maersk, see ibid., June 6, 1998, 1A, and July 27, 1998, 2B; and Containerization International, March 1996, 73.

  28. “The National Economic Significance of the Alameda Corridor,” Long Beach Harbor, February 1994.

  29. For descriptions of this port (and others as well), see Charles F. Queenan, Long Beach and Los Angeles: A Tale of Two Ports (Northridge, Calif.: Windsor Publications, 1986); Committee on Productivity of Marine Terminals, Improving Productivity in U.S. Marine Terminals (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986).

  30. On this shadowy world, see Donald Axelrod, Shadow Government: The Hidden World of Public Authorities (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1992).

  31. This pattern applies to all such port authorities; see Axelrod, Shadow Government, pp. 15–17.

  32. Interview with Bruce Lambert, trade analyst, Harbor Square Administration Building, Long Beach Port, April 11, 1997. See also “The National Economic Significance of the Alameda Corridor” (Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, February 1994; prepared by the Authority of the Port of Long Beach).

  33. On the number of port authorities, see Axelrod, Shadow Government, pp. 238–40. For an account of the origins of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the parent of Long Beach et al., see Jameson Doig, “Regional Conflict in the New York Metropolis: The Legend of Robert Moses and the Power of the Port Authority,” Urban Studies 27:2 (April 1990) 201–32. Doig shows how port managers overcame the “provincialism” of local political control in New York City to impose their own “apolitical” dominance on a region. See also Doig’s forthcoming history of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Empire on the Hudson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), especially chap. 12, “Breaking an Airline Monopoly” (draft courtesy of Professor Doig).

  34. George Murchison (president of the Long Beach Harbor Commission), “Our Side of the COSCO Issue,” press release, April 25, 1997.

  35. The Port of Long Beach, “Fact Sheet About the Port of Long Beach” (February 1997); and Muller, Intermodal Freight Transportation, p. 110. See also Port of Long Beach, Harbor Handbook (1995 edition); “Ports Ready for ‘Jumboships,’ ” Intermodal Shipping (July 1995), 29; Port of Long Beach 1996 Annual Report; “The National Economic Significance of the Alameda Corridor” (Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, Long Beach, February 1994) 3.

  36. Port of Long Beach 1996 Annual Report, pp. 4–5; on the deli counters in Wells, Maine, see WSJ, February 3, 1998, A1, A8.

  37. Port of Long Beach, Harbor Handbook (1995 edition), p. 1; Port of Long Beach 1996 Annual Report, p. 15.

  38. “As Economy Booms, Shipping Slows, Delaying Deliveries Across the Nation,” WSJ, September 30, 1997, A2.

  39. WSJ, February 27, 1998, 1. The full quote is: “Today the unthinkable has happened. Once unthinkable mergers, from aerospace and banking to health care and telecommunications, are leaving some markets with only a handful of major players.”

  40. WSJ, January 4, 1999, R8; see also BusinessWeek, December 8, 1997, 36; and WSJ, January 2, 1998, R6.

  41. WSJ, May 11, 1998, A10; and New York Times (hereafter NYT) May 12, 1998, D1; for background of the NYNEX–Bell Atlantic merger, see BusinessWeek, January 8, 1996, 32 (though the merger itself took place in August 1997).

  42. “High-Balling Toward Two Big Railroads,” BusinessWeek, March 17, 1997, 32; “Rail Mergers Take Toll on Small Towns,” WSJ, November 29, 1996, A2; “Transport Firms Increase Prices,” WSJ, March 9, 1998, A6; and “U.S. Approves Plan to Divide Conrail in Two,” WSJ, June 9, 1998, A3. These companies were CSX, Burlington Northern, Union Pacific, and Norfolk Southern.

  43. “Delta and United Air Plan Huge Alliance,” WSJ, April 25, 1998, A3–4; and “Delta’s Alliance With United Is On Again,” NYT, May 1, 1998, D2. The Salomon Brothers’ quote appears in “Four Airlines Set Two Alliances for Marketing,” NYT, April 24, 1998, D1.

  44. Miles, quoted in “Winds of Change,” Containerization International, February 1998, 35; and Reeve, quoted in “Mergers Reshape Shipping,” Journal of Commerce, January 5, 1998, 8.

  45. NYT, January 21, 1998, D2; see also “Theater Consolidation Jolts Hollywood Power Structure,” WSJ, January 21, 1998, B1; and “Attack of the Giant Theaters,” WSJ, March 4, 1998, B8.

  46. On hotels and gaming, see “ITT Accepts $9.8 Billion Bid, Forming the Biggest Hotel Chain,” NYT, October 21, 1997, 1; “Hilton Makes $6.5 Billion Bid for ITT,” NYT, J
anuary 28, 1997, D1; “Hilton Hotels to Buy Ball Entertainment for More Than $2 Billion,” NYT, June 7, 1996, D1; on gold mines, “A New Breed of Wolf at the Corporate Door,” NYT, March 19, 1997, D1; on department stores, see “Allen Questrom’s Quest,” Business Week, November 28, 1994, 116–17.

  47. For quote, see WSJ, August 1, 1995, A2, A5. See also “Wave of Mergers Is Transforming American Banking,” WSJ, August 21, 1995, A1; and Business Week, April 20, 1998, 40. On the $31.4 billion merger of Northwest and Wells Fargo, see WSJ, June 9, 1998, A2.

  48. On the Gannett chain, see Richard McCord, The Chain Gang: One Newspaper Versus the Gannett Empire (Columbus: University of Missouri Press, 1996); and NYT, August 7, 1997, B1. On the subject of acquisitions by the New York Times Company, see NYT, June 12, 1993, 47; NYT, February 19, 1996, D1; October 13, 1998, p. C8.

  49. “More Merger Mania,” editorial, NYT, April 15, 1998, A24; “A Monster Merger,” editorial, NYT, April 8, 1998, A18; and “A Big Bank Merger, Again,” NYT, June 10, 1998, A28. In the last editorial, the paper said that “if mergers are well executed, they hold little threat to banking customers, who might even benefit from the combined institution being able to offer more services.”

  50. Among such REITs was Starwood Lodging (headed by Barry Sternlicht), which in 1997 operated the biggest chain of hotels in the world; another was Simon-DeBartolo, a 1993 merged firm worth $16 billion. Simon-DeBartolo specialized in building shopping malls and strips. In the mid-1990s it owned the Mall of America (Bloomington, Minn.), the biggest mall in the country. For analysis of REITs and their history, see National Real Estate Investor, September 1993; S. L. Mintz, “Lukewarm Property,” CFO: The Magazine for Senior Financial Executives, May 1996; “The New World of Real Estate,” Business Week, September 22, 1997, 78–87; “REITs Come of Age,” Business Week, December 29, 1997, 152; and John Holusha, “Trusts Are Making Strides as Investors in New York Buildings,” NYT, January 21, 1998, B7.