Pandora's Box

SHIPPING

On the day set the Shipping Board opened the bids submitted for the sale of all its vessels, and found that, like Pandora's box, they contained many troubles and a ray of hope. There were only about 20 bids. Of that number, four at first sight seemed fairly satisfactory; about the same number, as Chairman Lasker expressed it, were in "the twilight zone"; there was one freak bid of $1,000,000,000 for the entire fleet; and a dozen or so bids that seemed manifestly unsatisfactory.

A committee of the Board at once opened conferences in Manhattan with several of the bidders. The troubles--and they were to some extent anticipated--came from the small number of the bids and the inadequacy of the majority of them. It was disappointing to the Board that lines such as the International Mercantile Marine, Luckenbach, Moore and McCormack, Cosmopolitan, C. D. Mallory & Co., and the Barber Line did not make offers. The Board's ray of hope was that such offers as had been made would be improved by the bidders in the ensuing conferences.

The most encouraging bids were for the Pacific Coast-to-Orient trade. Two lines, the Pacific Mail and the Admiral Line (in which Robert Dollar is interested), each bid to buy its own route and that operated by the other. There were also several bids for the South American trade, and others for East Indian and Mediterranean routes. The United American Lines (of which W. A. Harriman is Chairman) are understood to be making overtures for the purchase of five of the Board's large Atlantic passenger liners: the Leviathan, George Washington, America, President Buchanan, President Roosevelt.