After the stock market crash in 1929, the firm went through hard
times. To make maters worse Dad's brother Paul was spending money
with both hands and charging it to the business. (Brother Joe had
left a couple of years earlier.) Dad had had enough. He and Paul
dissolved the partnership and, although it was not part of the
agreement, Sam undertook to pay all of Paul's debts to Warner's,
Hutzler's and many other creditors. He paid off those debts at $5.00
a week and ultimately cleared the accounts. He was able to borrow on
an unsecured basis from the National Marine Bank (now part of
Nations Bank). Dad was obsessed with maintaining the integrity of
the family name. To help maintain that integrity, Mother was not
allowed to spend money on a dress for four years.
Then in 1935, fortunes turned around. Under the Tariff Act of
1930, customs brokers were permitted to share fees with attorneys,
in a sort of barrister / solicitor relationship, and, as a matter of
fact, they could represent clients before the Board of General
Appraisers (which later became the U.S. Customs Court, and is now
the Court of International Trade).
At about that time, S. Schapiro & Sons, which principals were
Joseph and Ben Schapiro (no kin) were importing rags from the Far
East. Under the tariff, papermaking rags were free of duty, while
wiping rags were dutiable at $ .03 per pound. Any commingling of the
two was subject to the higher rate unless the importer segregated
them at his own expense under government supervision, an arduous and
expensive task.
Sam arranged with a customs attorney firm in New York to
represent the Schapiros with a contingent fee of one third of the
duties recovered or saved. Dad would get half the attorney's fee.
The contention was that all of the rags were for papermaking.
On the date of the trial, Joe Schapiro took the stand and
explained the difference between wiping rags and papermaking rags
with respect to quality, size, texture, and for all I know, the
phases of the moon. As he came off the stand, he whispered to Dad,
"Sam, I could just as well have been a witness for the government."
In any event, the importer prevailed, and Dad received payment
from the attorney of about $ 35,000 - a handsome sum in those days.
He immediately paid off all of his debts and took my mother, Hilda,
to Europe - the first of the annual trips they took up until the
outbreak of World War II and then continued afterwards.
As a result of these trips, the company developed extensive
relationships in Europe which, notwithstanding the demise or merger
of some of the firms, still remain. The Samuel Shapiro name brought
much business to Baltimore and strong personal friendships developed
between our families.
World War II brought more changes. A shortage of help meant the
staff was limited to four women who worked full time and me, who
worked after school, on weekends and during the summer. Sam was
forced to work a lot of overtime, uncompensated, of course, except
for dinner.
Baltimore was a busy port. Ships would duck into the bay to avoid
the U-boat menace, dump all of their cargo here, load, and move out.
Goods for Philadelphia, Boston and most of all New York had to move,
mostly under customs seal, for clearance at destination. Goods moved
predominantly by rail and the port worked day and night. To make
matters worse, we never knew what ships were coming until they
arrived, since they maintained radio silence at sea.
But the war did end, and business slowly returned to normal.
About this time, Dad was visited by a young woman, the newly hired
maritime reporter for The Sun Helen Delich (now Bentley). She
and Dad became good friends and, as Helen will acknowledge, my
father became her mentor. The company became the first sponsor of a
TV program on Channel 2, then WMAR, "The Port That Built A City."
Each Sunday afternoon, Helen would report on the latest maritime
news and then interview one or more of the port leaders, such as Dad
or Joseph L. Stanton, then head of the Maryland Port Authority, or
Captain W.G.N. Ruckert. Ruckert was the feisty warehouseman known
for having thrown a typewriter at his son - who ducked. (The
typewriter went sailing out a second story window.) Kinescopes of
the show still exist and Helen is crusading to have them transferred
to video tape and shown to the old timers and to a new generation
who would be fascinated by their historic content.
In 1946 my father was one of this colorful group that helped to
convince the state legislature to pass the enabling act that brought
the Maryland Port Authority into existence, and ultimately brought
Baltimore into the modern container era. Dundalk Marine Terminal
came into being as a part of the effort.
Sam, Helen, and I were invited to attend two shipboard parties,
hosted jointly by Germany and Japan, to celebrate their first calls
in Baltimore since the end of World War II. The Japanese ship docked
in Canton, and the German ship at Locust Point. There was much food
and drink at both parties, and both were proper celebration of the
epochal event.
Inevitably I came to the firm on a full-time basis. To say that
Dad and I had our disagreements is putting it mildly. We had what
would be called today different management styles. Nothing serious
in our relationship except that I had to do end runs around him and
make him think they were his ideas; for example, I replaced four
Vornado fans that blew documents around the office with central air
conditioning. I had a hard time changing a procedure that he had
developed thirty years before and of which he was extremely proud.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the vigor of our discussions, we
expanded. We began to serve Dulles, Baltimore Washington
International airport, and Norfolk (the latter to protect us from
diminishing Baltimore traffic) and Dad was pleased with the results.
When in 1978 we moved from South Gay Street, where we had been
located in one building or another since the 1920s, to the World
Trade Center, Dad ignored the whole process, and never set foot in
the place until the day we moved in. He didn't want to believe we
were spending so much money just to move. But we set up his new
office exactly as it was in the old office. He loved it and
eventually convinced himself that the move was a good idea of his.
For a time, all three of our children worked for the company and
Dad kneeled over them. They, in turn, looked after him as he came to
the office every day.
Dad was the most ethical person I've ever known. Here and abroad,
his peers respected him as a man who paid his bills and kept his
promises: He personified the word "integrity." That integrity, along
with his love of baseball, appear to have been internalized by his
grandchildren. At a ninetieth birthday party at the World Trade
Center he was in his glory telling Brooks Robinson that he saw "Iron
Man" Joe McGinty pitch and win both ends of a double header,
separated by a few beers between games.
Dad came to the office every day, even in his ninety-first year.
He had a good friend in the business named Alfred Burin, a feisty
German Jewish immigrant and chairman of Globe Shipping in New York.
Al was amazing. At the age of one hundred he worked every day;
smoking his pipe, having lunch at Windows on the World with a
martini before and a cigar after. On his one hundredth birthday, he
appeared on "The Today Show," and he and Sam kept in touch often, no
doubt comparing notes on how badly the "young whippersnappers" were
handling the business these days.
Al died at one hundred and two, and Sam naturally thought it a
pity that he went so young. Dad himself died a few months before his
ninety-second birthday. Of course, he was at the office the morning
of the day he checked in at Sinai Hospital. I went to see him that
evening. He was very weak but wanted of course to know how business
was. Then he asked me, "Did Al Burin have a big funeral?" I don't
remember what I answered. He fell asleep and died later that night.
I often wonder what Dad would think of the company's growth
today. With offices from New York down to Savannah, we operate with
sophisticated data processing and are making an entry into logistics
management. We have come a long way from that $5.00 rolltop desk of
which he was so proud, where it all began.
