THE LAST MANIFEST

This Spindle of Manifests, with the last entry dated 03/26/85, remained in the dispatcher’s office of the Tidewater Grain Company at Girard Point at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It records the very last shipment of corn that was loaded onto ships for disposal far out in the Altantic Ocean. In 1979 Jimmy Carter enacted a Grain Embargo against Russia in response to the 10 year occupation of Afghanistan. Russia then turned to Argentina to purchase its grain at just over half the price it had been paying to the U.S. Now, 30 years later, the United States is still involved in its own 10 year old war in Afghanistan, not unlike the one for which Russia was being "punished." Tidewater’s demise marked the end of an era in America’s Grain industry.