The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America (50 page)

6
. “Chain Stores and the Groceryman,”
Review of Reviews
78 (1928), 109; Dx 998, 999, 1000.

7
. James L. Palmer, “Economic and Social Aspects of Chain Stores,” 277; President’s Research Committee on Social Trends,
Recent Social Trends in the United States
(New York, 1933); Shideler, “Chain Store” (Ph.D. diss.), chap. 1, 9; W. A. Masters, “The Chain Store, the Catalog House, and the Tax Payer” (St. Joseph, Mo., 1928), 11, Mms 159, LSUS.

8
. Lebhar,
Chain Stores in America
, 154; FTC,
Chain Stores: Scope of the Chain-Store Inquiry
, 10; FTC,
Chain Stores: Cooperative Grocery Chains
, xvi.

9
. O’Pry,
Chronicles of Shreveport and Caddo Parish
, 355.

10
. Ibid.; U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Navigation, “Radio Service Bulletin,” June 1, 1922. Dates of licensing were obtained from a helpful article, “Shreveport Radio Stations of the 1920s,”
jeff560.tripod.com/am14.html
, accessed September 15, 2009.

11
. U.S. Department of Commerce, “Radio Service Bulletin,” September 1, 1925, 7; January 31, 1928, 20; February 28, 1929, 12; June 29, 1929, 17; Derek Vaillant, “Bare-Knuckled Broadcasting,” 196; Harper, “‘New Battle on Evolution,’” 413.

12
. Doerksen,
American Babel
, chap. 5.

13
. Philip Lieber, “The Menace of the Chain Store System” (1929), Mms 159, LSUS; Harry W. Schachter, “War on the Chain Store,”
Nation
, May 7, 1930, 544.

14
. Schachter, “War on the Chain Store,” 544;
Printers’ Ink
, February 20, 1930, 4.

15
. Harper, “‘New Battle on Evolution,’” 414; Charlie C. McCall, “Live and Let Live,” Mms 159, LSUS; R. K. Calloway, “The Handicappers or the Chain Store Menace,” Mms 159, LSUS.

16
. Vaillant, “Bare-Knuckled Broadcasting,” 199; Harper, “‘New Battle on Evolution,’” 417, 423; Lebhar,
Chain Stores in America
, 158. Pay for grocery clerks was commonly in the range of $15–$30; see Edward G. Ernst and Emil M. Hartl, “Chain Management and Labor,”
Nation
, November 26, 1930, 574.

17
. Duncan was convicted in 1930 of indecency for uttering the phrase “By God” on the air, and the Federal Radio Commission revoked his station’s license. Flowers,
Japanese Conquest of American Opinion
, 265; Flowers,
America Chained
, 57.

18
. On Coughlin, see Brinkley,
Voices of Protest
. Brinkley makes no mention of the chain-store issue or the anti-chain broadcasters. W. K. Henderson, “On Chain Store Monopoly and Packers Consent Decree” (n.d., 1930), PSOC 5/31, Notre Dame University Archives, South Bend, Ind.

19
. Lebhar,
Chain Stores in America
, 160–61.

20
. Ibid., 163.

21
. Ibid., 164; Alfred G. Buehler, “Anti-Chain-Store Taxation,” 350; Ingram and Rao, “Store Wars,” 31; Hardy, “Taxation of Chain Retailers in the United States,” 258; Lee, “Recent Trends in Chain-Store Tax Legislation,” 267; Schachter, “War on the Chain Store,” 545.

22
. The first FTC report,
Chain-Store System of Marketing and Distribution
, was released as Senate doc. 146, 71st Cong., 2nd sess., May 12, 1930. Four further reports on chain stores had followed by the end of 1931, and many more throughout the decade. Numerous issue guides for debaters were published during these years, several of them with the assistance of the National Chain Store Association; see, for example, Ezra Buehler,
Chain Store Debate Manual
, and Somerville,
Chain Store Debate Manual
. Oliver Clinton Carpenter,
Debate Outlines on Public Questions
(New York, 1932), 88–102, addressed the chain-store question in more balanced fashion. James L. Palmer,
What About Chain Stores?
(New York, 1929); Russell, Lyons, and Flickinger, “Social and Economic Aspects of Chain Stores,” 27–36; Edward G. Ernst and Emil M. Hartl, “Chains Versus Independents,”
Nation
, November 12–December 3, 1930; John T. Flynn, “Chain Stores: Menace or Promise?”
New Republic
, April 15–29, 1931; Arthur Capper, “The Chain Store Problem,” address over WJSV, March 21, 1930, collection 12, box 38, KSHS.

23
.
Jackson v. State Board of Tax Commissioners of Indiana
, 38 F.2d 652 (1930);
State Board of Tax Commissioners v. Jackson
, 283 U.S. 527 (1931);
Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Maxwell
, 284 U.S. 575 (1931).

24
. Lebhar,
Chain Stores in America
, 129, 168.

25
. Minutes of the meeting of division presidents, November 10–11, 1927, vi, xiv, in box 35, Danville trial exhibits; Tedlow,
New and Improved
, 195; Lebhar,
Chain Stores in America
, 169; A&P, “A&P, an Organization and Its Workers” (1930); Dx 124, box 66.

26
. Gx 114; “A&P Price Action Credited in Growth,”
NYT
, August 10, 1930.

12: THE SUPERMARKET

1
. “Financial Notes,”
NYT
, July 26, 1928. The depreciated value of A&P’s real-estate holdings fell 13 percent from 1926 to 1930 as the company shed property. Total assets nearly doubled over the same period, so land and buildings declined from 8 percent of the company’s assets to only 3.6 percent, insulating the company against loss in the event the value of real estate needed to be written down; William Henry Smith, “A Billion from ‘Cash and Carry,’”
Barron’s
, January 19, 1931.

2
. Ward,
Produce and Conserve
, 230; Davis,
Don’t Make A&P Mad
, 45. Census product-line data are not available prior to 1929, but studies such as Croxton’s
Study of Housewives’ Buying Habits in Columbus, Ohio, 1924
suggest that the vast majority of housewives purchased meat at meat markets and milk at dairy stores, rather than at grocery chains. The first census survey of 1929 found that meat accounted for 17 percent of sales at combination stores. U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 Retail Distribution: Summary for the United States
(Washington, D.C., 1933), 159; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Historical Statistics of the United States
, 695.

3
. Clarke, “Consumer Negotiations,” 109; Roger Horowitz,
Putting Meat on the American Table
, 138–39; Rentz, “‘Death of Grandma,’” MS, 54; Dx 438, box 66.

4
. Shideler, “Chain Store” (Ph.D. diss.), chap. 2, 6, pointed out that one effect of the automobile and improved mass transit was to encourage mobility within the city. “With the shifting of families about the city, standardized stores … have a distinct advantage because it in effect removes the strangeness of the new environment for the incoming family.”

5
. Dipman,
Modern Grocery Store
, 4, 8, 13, 23, 27; Davis,
Don’t Make A&P Mad
, 44. Average sales at traditional stores were around $18,000 per year, at combination stores $33,000; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1930 Retail Distribution
, 45.

6
. Baxter,
Chain Store Distribution and Management
, 179; “A&P from A to Z,”
Business Week
, September 30, 1932; Dx 401, box 67. A store that opened in Philadelphia in 1929 covered twenty thousand square feet, making it the largest unit in the entire chain; see “A&P Leases Philadelphia Store,”
NYT
, December 11, 1929.

7
. “Charts, Presidents’ Meeting, August 16, 1928,” box 67, Danville trial; “Brief for the United States,” 156, Danville trial.

8
. Appel, “Supermarket,” 41–43; Mayo,
American Grocery Store
, 138; Phillips, “Supermarket,” 193. See also Goldman, “Stages in the Development of the Supermarket.”

9
. Tedlow,
New and Improved
, 226–29. Cullen’s letter appears in M. M. Zimmerman,
The Super Market: A Revolution in Distribution
, 32–35, and is reprinted in substantial part in Tedlow,
New and Improved
, 381–84. Data on combination store sales and operating costs are from U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Census of Distribution, Retail Chains
(Washington, D.C., 1933), 36–37.

10
.
Business Week
, February 8, 1933; Appel, “Supermarket,” 44; Mayo,
American Grocery Store
, 145.

11
. For example, the San Francisco wholesaler Wellman, Peck & Company formed Neighborhood Stores Inc., a voluntary chain with three thousand member stores. Wellman, Peck & Co.,
Our First 100 Years
(San Francisco, 1949).

12
. M. M. Zimmerman and F. R. Grant, “Warning: Here Comes the Super-Market!”
Nation’s Business
, March 1937, 21; Phillips, “Supermarket,” 190.

13
. Adelman,
A&P
, 41–42; Gx 134.

14
. Minutes of Central Western Division, January 13, 1933, Gx 146.

15
. A&P’s gross profit on coffee was 45 percent in 1920 and 1921, implying an 82 percent markup; after dipping as low as 20 percent in 1928, it settled in the 30 percent range for several years; see “Charts, Presidents’ Meetings, year ending March 1, 1941,” 162, box 36, Danville trial exhibits.

16
. Minutes of division presidents meeting, June 25, 1931, box 67, Danville trial exhibits.

17
. Dx 420; Tr 20438; Phillips, “Supermarket,” 195; “The Consumer Accepts the Supermarket,”
Super Market Merchandising
, November 1936, 15. Retail food sales were $10.8 billion in 1929, but due to deflation fell to $8.4 billion in 1935.

18
. “Grocers Call A&P a Monopoly; Put Up the Money to Prove It,”
Business Week
, June 22, 1932, 8. According to Dipman,
Modern Grocery Store
, 4, the average margin in food retailing fell from 25 percent around 1920 to 20 percent or less by 1931.

19
. See, for example, “People,”
Time
, September 21, 1931; “$100,000, Please, for Charm and Poise,”
Xenia (Ohio) Evening Gazette
, September 19, 1931; “Highlights of Broadway,”
Albuquerque Journal
, November 19, 1931; “Mystery Romance of the Chain Store Heir,”
Hamilton (Ohio) Daily News
, November 28, 1931; “Josephine Hartford Bryce,”
NYT
, June 10, 1992.

20
. “Private Lives,”
Life
, January 25, 1937, 58; “Spotlight Hits Shrinking Hartfords,”
New York Sunday News
, January 9, 1938; “Huntington Hartford, A&P Heir Adept at Losing Millions, Dies at 97,”
NYT
, May 20, 2008.

21
. For contemporaneous discussion of the social factors behind the anti-chain movement, see James L. Palmer, “Economic and Social Aspects of Chain Stores.” On the anti-chain movement in Chicago, see Deutsch,
Building a Housewife’s Paradise
, 78–80.

22
. The 1939
Census of Business
, vol. 1,
Retail Trade
, pt. 1, 170, shows that 119,024 independent grocery stores then in operation were established from 1930 to 1937; typical mortality estimates imply that the number surviving in 1939 was less than half the total number established in 1930 to 1937. The number of proprietors rose from 284,277 in 1929 to 318,736 six years later and reached 351,981 by 1939; ibid., 57; Adelman,
A&P
, 430.

23
. Baxter,
Chain Store Distribution and Management
, 17; FTC,
Final Report on the Chain-Store Investigation
, vol. 5, 38; FTC,
Chain Store Inquiry
, vol. 3,
Chain Stores: Chain-Store Leaders and Loss Leaders
, Senate doc. 51, 72nd Cong., 1st sess. (1932), xi.

13: FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT

1
. Alter,
Defining Moment
, 77.

2
. Seamans to Roosevelt, January 19, 1933; Rund to Roosevelt, February 18, 1933; McKay to Roosevelt, April 13, 1933; Applegate to Roosevelt, n.d., all in OF 288, Chain Stores, 1933–34, FDR.

3
. The foundational texts of 1920s consumerism were Chase,
Tragedy of Waste
, one of the first books to explore the manipulation of consumer preferences by advertising, and Chase and Schlink,
Your Money’s Worth
, which became a bestseller. Chase and Schlink were the co-founders of Consumers’ Research. Means, “The Consumer and the New Deal,” 7.

4
. U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Historical Statistics of the United States
, 319; Bolin, “Economics of Middle-Class Family Life.”

5
. Perhaps the earliest articulation of the consumerist view was Orleck, “‘We Are That Mythical Thing Called the Public.’” See also Orleck,
Common Sense and a Little Fire
, 235–39. Alan Brinkley goes even further, contending, “The ‘New Dealer’ anti-monopolists were worried principally about protecting consumers”;
End of Reform
, 64. Subsequent assertions of consumers’ preeminence can be found in Lizabeth Cohen,
A Consumers’ Republic
, 24; Donohue,
Freedom from Want
, 171–82; McGovern,
Sold American
, 135; Deutsch, “From ‘Wild Animal Stores’ to Women’s Sphere.” Jacobs,
Pocketbook Politics
, 95–135, provides a more balanced exploration of the tension between the New Deal’s producerist and consumerist inclinations. The quotation is from Donohue,
Freedom from Want
, 228.

6
. Brinkley,
End of Reform
, 59.

7
. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, “Closed for the Holiday: The Bank Holiday of 1933,” n.d.; Huff,
Chain Store Tyranny and the Independent Grocers’ Dilemma
.