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“A new battle on evolution”: The Anti-Chain Store Trade-at-Home Agitation of 1929–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

F. J. Harper
F. J. Harper
Affiliation:
John Harper runs the American department of Richard Booth (Bookseller) Ltd., Frank Lewis House, Hay-on-Wye, via Hereford.
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Extract

Five years after William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow bitterly debated the descent of man before the world's press at the Dayton, Tennessee, “monkey trial,” the New York liberal weekly The Nation brought news to its metropolitan readers that “A new battle on evolution is raging in the South. This time, however,” wrote Harry Schacter, “the issue is not religious but economic… The battle is between the small retailer, taking the fundamentalist position, against the chain store, an exponent of modernism in distribution.” The “chain-store menace” was, Schacter judged, “the question most talked of below the Ohio.” Not just in the South, but from the Rockies to the Appalachians and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, hundreds of organizations sprang up in the winter of 1929–1930 to urge all good citizens to “trade-at-home” by boycotting the “foreign-owned, community-wrecking” chain stores. Dozens of anti-chain newspapers were rushed into circulation, while broadcasters emulated the example set by the undisputed leader of the enemies of the chains, Shreveport radio station owner W. K. Henderson. In all, the agitation was carried on “with a virulence which has not been matched in business since those early days in the Pennsylvania oil regions when the ‘independents’ rose up in their wrath against John D. Rockefeller's ‘Anaconda,’” and although the full passion of revivalist fervour lasted but a few months, the agitation proved to be the prelude to a decade of bitter legislative struggle between chains and independents.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , December 1982 , pp. 407 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

1 Schacter, Harry W., “War On The Chain Store,” The Nation, 130 (7 05 1930), 544Google Scholar.

2 Flynn, John T., “Chain Stores: Menace or Promise? II: The Enemies of the Chains,” New Republic, 66 (22 04 1931), 270Google Scholar. For a lengthier account of the 1929–30 agitation, see the author's Ph.D. dissertation, “The Anti-Chain Store Movement in the United States, 1927–1940” (Centre for the Study of Social History, University of Warwick, 1981), pp. 76–144Google Scholar. For passing references, see Lebhar, Godfrey M., Chain Stores In America, 1859–1959 (New York, 1959), pp. 159–65Google Scholar, and Ryant, Carl G., “The South and the Movement Against Chain Stores,” Journal of Southern History, 39 (05 1973), 209–11Google Scholar.

3 General accounts of chain store development may be found in Baxter, William J., Chain Store Distribution and Management (New York and London, 1928)Google Scholar; Beckman, Theodore N. and Nolen, Herman C., The Chain Store Problem, A Critical Analysis (New York and London, 1938)Google Scholar; Hayward, Walter S. and White, Percival, Chain Stores: Their Management and Operation (New York, 1928)Google Scholar; Lebhar, Chain Stores In America; and Nichols, John P., The Chain Store Tells Its Story (New York, 1940)Google Scholar.

4 As an officer of the National Association of Retail Druggists put it to a Congressional committee in 1940, “It was in those days, in such small towns and small cities, that we saw attained the nearest thing to Utopia that any of us now living will ever see…. While it may not have been ‘efficient,’ these self-contained economic units represented a civilization in which the average man saw his happiest days” (House Ways and Means Committee, Subcommittee, “Hearings On H.R. i, A Bill Providing for an Excise Tax on Retail Stores,” 76th Cong., 3rd Sess., 1940, p. 418).

5 Emmet, Boris and Jeuck, John E., Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company (Chicago, 1965), pp. 150–68Google Scholar. Sears and Montgomery Ward did not begin to open retail stores until 1925 and 1926, respectively, then rapidly becoming major powers in the chain store industry.

6 In 1929, when the first census of distribution was taken, house-to-house selling, company stores, farmers' and consumers' cooperatives and mail order sales together accounted for less than 2 percent of total national retail sales (15th Census of the United States, Distribution, Vol. I; Retail Distribution, Part I, Table 5A, p. 68).

7 This geographic shift is illustrated by two reports of the Federal Trade Commission's Chain Store Inquiry (34 reports, 1931–34): (1) State Distribution of Chain Stores, 1913–1928 (Sen. Doc. 130, 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess.), which shows that reporting chains operated 44·9 percent of their stores in 1919 in the 3 Middle-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but only 30·8 percent by 1928; and (2) The Chain Store in the Small Town (Sen. Doc. 93, 73rd Cong., 2nd Sess.), a survey of 30 widely-scattered small towns in which 222 chain stores were opened 1918–31, with a peak in 1928–29, compared with only 24 openings before 1918. Between 1926 and 1931 the number of chain stores in the 30 towns increased by 89·6 percent, whereas the number of independents actually fell by 7·7 percent.

8 President's Conference on Unemployment, Recent Economic Changes in the United States, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1929), 1, 331–42Google Scholar.

9 Chains of four or more stores made 11.58 percent of retail sales in places of less than 10,000 population in 1929 (15th Census of the United States, Distribution, Vol. I; Retail Distribution, Part I, Table 23, p. 976).

10 For an account of how this happened in one small Midwestern city – Warren Harding's home town of Marion, Ohio – see Wood, Charles Wesley, The Passing of Normalcy (New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

11 For collections of articles on this theme, see Bloomfield, Daniel, ed., Chain Stores (The Reference Shelf, Vol. 7 No. 7, New York, 1931)Google Scholar and Buehler, Ezra C., ed., A Debate Handbook on the Chain Store Question (Lawrence, Kansas, 1930)Google Scholar.

12 The largest of the new voluntary chains, the Independent Grocers' Alliance, by 1930 linked 8,500 retailers and 48 wholesalers in 33 states, even though founded only in 1926. Wholesale members pooled orders to collect extra discounts from manufacturers, while the retailers adopted uniform ivory and blue store colours, standard fixtures, and the collective trading name. For this and similar organizations, see the Chain Store Inquiry reports, Cooperative Grocery Chains (Sen. Doc. 12, 72nd Cong., 1st Sess.) and Drug and Hardware Cooperative Chains (Sen. Doc. 82, 72nd Cong., 1st Scss.).

13 Interstate Grocer, 13 Mar. 1926, 24 Aug. 1929; Lebhar, , Chain Stores In America, pp. 159–61Google Scholar. The Interstate Grocer, a weekly newspaper published in St. Louis, acted as the reporting service of the anti chain store movement.

14 Botsford, Samuel B., “The Chain Store Comes of Age,” Nation's Business, 17 (04 1929), 70 ffGoogle Scholar.; “Chains Will Now Court Public Opinion In Earnest,” Printers' Ink, 149 (3 10 1929), 33–34 ffGoogle Scholar.; Sams, Earl C., What Is The Chain Store's Responsibility To Its Community? (New York, 1929)Google Scholar.

15 Pusateri, C. Joseph, “The Stormy Career of a Radio Maverick, W. K. Henderson of KWKH,” Louisiana Studies, 15 (Winter 1976), 389–98Google Scholar.

16 Interstate Grocer, 30 Mar., 16 Nov., 7 Dec. 1929, 8 Mar. 1930; Pusateri, pp. 398–401; “Henderson's Merchants' Minute Men Challenge The Chains,” Printers' lnk, 150 (20 02 1930), 4Google Scholar.

17 The demands of U.S. Senator Clarence Dill of Washington that Henderson should be silenced by the Federal Radio Commission if he did not cease his “profanity,” and Henderson's spirited counter-attack, egged on by his listeners' exhortations to “pickle Dill,” provoked such controversy that the New Orleans Times-Picayune (19 Jan. 1930) believed that “no radio topic has ever evoked as great an amount of national concern.”

18 Interstate Grocer, 30 Nov., 14 Dec. 1929, 4 Jan. 1930; New York Journal of Commerce, 5 Apr. 1930; FTC, Chain Store Inquiry, Final Report (Sen. Doc. 4, 74th Cong., 1st Sess.), pp. 46–49Google Scholar; Ernst, Edward G. and Hartl, Emil M., “Chains versus Independents, I: The Price War,” The Nation, 131 (12 11 1930), 518Google Scholar.

19 Saunders, the owner of a Memphis-based grocery chain of several hundred stores, took out full-page advertisements in leading Southern newspapers to address abusive open letters to “Rat Henderson,” a “shiny-eyed rat” with “glittering eyes and a gnawing mouth” who “gnaws at night on the character of responsible companies.” Henderson in turn engaged in facetious mimicry of “Clawrence” in a “high-pitched effeminate voice,” instructing his listeners to make a special boycott of the Saunders' stores. So well known did their exchanges become that the Kentucky legislature invited the pair to stage a debate before it, an offer Henderson declined. The ultimate winner of the feud was undoubtedly Henderson, for in July 1930 the Saunders' chain went into receivership, a failure which Saunders blamed entirely on “the Rat” (“Battle without Gloves; Piggly Wiggly Saunders Swings a Wicked Right at Henderson,” Printers' Ink, 150 (20 03 1930), 91–92Google Scholar; Forde, R., “‘Wild Man’ Saunders and Old Man Dignity Swap Wallops,” Printers' Ink, 151 (10 04 1930), 41–42 ffGoogle Scholar.; Interstate Grocer, 1, 8 Mar., 19 July 1930).

20 “Chains Face First Real Fight as South's Politicians Seize Issue,” Business Week, 5 03 1930, pp. 21–22, 24Google Scholar; Ernst, Edward G. and Hard, Emil M., “Chains versus Independents, IV: The Fighting Independents,” The Nation, 131 (3 12 1930), 606–8Google Scholar; Ellis, June J., “The War on the Chain Store,” Nation's Business, 18 (12 1930), 90ffGoogle Scholar.; True, James, “Public Antagonism: A Knife in the Heart of the Chains,” Sales Management, 22 (5 04 1930), 10–11 ffGoogle Scholar. For an account of one local campaign, in Klamath Falls, Oregon, see Flowers, Montaville, America Chained: A Discussion of “What's Wrong with the Chain Store” (Pasadena, 1931), pp. 31–40Google Scholar.

21 For Caslow, who broadcast from Grand Rapids, see Hollister, Paul, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Advertising and Selling, 14 (16 04 1930), 17–18ffGoogle Scholar. Duncan's extraordinarily offensive language and theatrical invocations of Divine wrath upon various chain store men led to his trial, and subsequent imprisonment, in an important case testing the penal provisions of the 1927 Radio Act. See Duncan v. United States, 48 F. (2nd) 128 (1931).

22 Pusateri, pp. 401–2; Interstate Grocer, 14 Feb. 1931; Interstate Merchant, 23 Jan. 1937.

23 Butchers' Advocate, 19 Feb. 1930, p. 13.

24 “In 35 States 260 Bodies are Fighting Chain Stores,” Business Week, 9 04 1930, p. 24Google Scholar.

25 Steffler, C. W., “And Now, The Anti-Chain Store ‘Menace,’” Commerce and Finance, 19 (4 06 1930), 1099Google Scholar.

26 See, for example, the opinion poll evidence of the attitudes of New Yorkers in Bader, Louis, “Consumers and Chain-Store Taxation,” Journal of Retailing, 15 (12 1939), 115–19Google Scholar. Bader found that 56.6 percent of “city” voters, and 46.3 percent of “suburban” voters, were in favour of “discouraging further chain-store growth.” It should be observed, however, that although retailer groups in New York City made several attempts during the 1930s to secure discriminatory municipal taxation of chain stores, they received negligible active public support.

27 “Retail Secretaries' Opinions of Merchant Minute Men,” Retail Ledger, first April issue 1930Google Scholar.

28 Interstate Grocer, 3, 17 May 1930; New York Times, 27 Apr. 1930.

29 “The Anti-Chain Store ‘Racket,’” Commerce and Finance, 19 (19 03 1930), 580–81Google Scholar; Interstate Grocer, 8, 22 Feb., 22 Mar., 17, 24 May 1930.

30 For contemporary surveys of public attitudes towards the social consequences of chain store distribution, see FTC, Chain Store Inquiry, The Chain Store in the Small Town, pp. 56–60, 68–87Google Scholar; Ernst, Edward G. and Hartl, Emil M., “Chains versus Independents, II: Chain Stores and the Community” and “III: Chain Management and Labor,” The Nation, 131 (19, 26 11 1930), 545–47, 574–76Google Scholar.

31 Particular damage was done by revelations that W. K. Henderson, the scourge of Wall Street, was hostile to “dirty union bums,” had played a major part in breaking a 1922 strike of railroad shopmen in Shreveport, and ran his iron works as a strict open shop. So much criticism developed from sections of his supporters on this score that Henderson finally agreed to allow the unions into his plant, and indeed soon began to present himself as a champion of organized labour (The Progressive, Madison, Wis., 26 Apr., 31 May 1930).

32 For the neutralization of the influential chambers of commerce by the chains' “buying in” to such groups, see Flowers, , America Chained, pp. 146–59Google Scholar.

33 FTC, Chain Store Inquiry, The Chain Store in the Small Town, pp. 60–64, 87–110Google Scholar; Converse, P. D. and Beattie, T. E., “Are Chain Stores Good Citizens?,” Journal of Marketing, 8 (10 1943), 172–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. That independents were not entirely undiscriminating in their hostility towards the chains may be judged from the fact that J. C. Penney, most of whose stores were in small towns, was almost everywhere singled out by them as being the best of the chains, the “cleanest” competitor and the most community-minded. There were even some merchants, more particularly in thinly-populated Western states, where automobile ownership (and therefore consumer mobility) was greatest, who considered prestigious dry goods and department stores of the Penney or Montgomery Ward type to be a local asset because of their tendency to lure in customers from a wide area, thereby producing “spin off” trade for the other merchants.

34 Modern Merchant and Grocery World, 19 Apr. 1930, p. 8.

35 Bader, “Consumers and Chain-Store Taxation,” p. 118; Fortune, 19 (02 1939), 91Google Scholar; Converse, Paul D., “Prices and Services of Chain and Independent Stores in Champaign-Urbana, 1937,” Journal of Marketing, 2 (01 1938), 197–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckman, and Nolen, , The Chain Store Problem, pp. 156–202Google Scholar; FTC, Chain Store Inquiry, The Chain Store in the Small Town, pp. 50–55Google Scholar.

36 See Caslow, Winfield H., The Sob Squad (Grand Rapids, 1928)Google Scholar.

37 Interstate Grocer, 1 Mar., 5 Apr., 9 Aug. 1930; Progressive Grocer, 9 (03 1930), 60Google Scholar.

38 Except that in St. Clairsville, Ohio, a platoon of war veterans, wearing steel helmets and carrying rifles, marched on the local A&P store when it failed to respect a Mayoral proclamation closing all businesses in honour of Armistice Day, and sent customers fleeing with tear gas before overturning displays and a fruit stand. The incident followed years of violations by the A&P of this local custom and the attack, while not directed against the presence of the A&P as such, symbolized a common frustration about the lack of community spirit of such “foreign-owned,” “get the money quick” companies (Interstate Grocer, 15 Nov. 1930; Progressive Grocer, 9 (12 1930), 54Google Scholar).

39 In the Soviet Union over half the peasant households were subjected to collectivization in the first five months of 1930, the peasants fighting back with “the sawed-off shotgun, the axe, the dagger, the knife,” and destroying their livestock rather than let it fall into the hands of the state (Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror (London, 1973), p. 43)Google Scholar.

40 Such as the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s, or the nightriding bands of farmers who burned down warehouses supposed to be controlled by the “tobacco trust” in the early years of the century.

41 Foster, H. M., “Have the Chains Reached their Peak?,” Printers' Ink Monthly, 20 (06 1930), 29–30ff., (07 1930), 39–40ffGoogle Scholar.; Phelps, Clyde W., “Some Limitations of the Chain System,” Commerce and Finance, 20 (4 03 1931), 357–58Google Scholar.

42 Pusateri, “Stormy Career,” pp. 402–6; New York Journal of Commerce, 20 Sept., 6 Dec. 1930; Interstate Grocer, 15 Nov. 1930, 14 Feb., 12 Dec. 1931, 5 Mar. 1932; Interstate Merchant, 23 Jan. 1937.

43 State Board of Tax Commissioners of Indiana v. faction, 283 U.S. 527 (1931).

44 See, for example, Morrill, A. H., quoted in Buehler, Debate Handbook, p. 147Google Scholar, or Harvard Law Review, 44 (01 1931), 456Google Scholar.

45 1935 Census of Business, Retail Distribution, Vol. IV, Table 38, p. 16; 1939 Census of Business, Vol I, Retail Trade, Part I, Table 3B, p. 65; Lebhar, , Chain Stores in America, pp. 61–74Google Scholar.