This is an interesting thread. It makes you think about the range of
consumable shipping containers (log rafts, canal arks, and now, today, metal
shipping containers used in Afghanistan as residences and prison cells) and
the ways in which shippers minimized costs by using such things as brick and
pig iron as ballast. In meatpacking and leather, an interesting exchange
developed in the last decades of the 19th century because American leather
interests wanted to limit the shipping of beef cattle on the hoof to Europe.
The leather industry lobbied for more dressed beef shipments to prevent the
European leather markets from having a competitive advantage over American
tanners by importing the most valuable of meat byproducts: hides.

DSR.
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David S. Rotenstein, Ph.D., RPA
Consulting Historian
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Fax: (301) 588-9394
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