PORT ORGANIZATION J
for additional capital outlay. A Traffic Committee may
be appointed to deal with all questions relating to the
actual working of the undertaking, unless there is sufficient
scope for separate committees distinguished perhaps as a
Docks Committee and a Warehouse Committee. A
Marine Committee, or a River Committee, or, it may be,
a Harbour Committee, will concern itself with the supervision
 of the approach channels of the port, including
dredging, channel maintenance, buoyage, wreck removal
and matters of that kind. Other committees may be
required to deal with Staff and Labour questions, Pilotage,
Stores, Mechanical Appliances, etc. ; these will all be
dependent on the conditions peculiar to the port. All
the committees will report to the Board in full session,
and their recommendations have to receive the approval
of the Board before they can be carried into effect.
Individualist Management. In contrast with the somewhat
 diffusive ramifications of the committee system in
this country, it may be pointed out that, in America, the
management is of a much more individualized character.
In place of a number of committees, averaging perhaps
ten or a dozen members apiece, reporting to a Board of
say, thirty members, there will be an administrative body
of two, three, four, or perhaps six Commissioners, each of
them the head of a particular department, but conferring
with his colleagues on questions of general policy. At
the port of Seattle, for instance, there are three Commissioners—one,
 primus inter pares, is President, another is
Secretary, and the third Treasurer, the President combining
with his other duties that of supervising the engineering
department.
At other American ports, there are instances of even
more autocratic control. The Commissioner of Docks
for the City of New York, though subordinate in status
to the Port of New York Authority, is very largely independent
 of their jurisdiction. He controls the working
of the waterfront at Manhattan Island, letting berths,

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