The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America (56 page)

24
. Fred M. Hechinger, “U.S. Foundations Worth 11 Billion,”
NYT
, July 11, 1960; Leonard Sloane, “Crucial Year for Chain,”
NYT
, February 5, 1973; Jacobson,
Greatest Good
, 3, 235; “Hartford Foundation Asks A&P to Plan a Stock Sale,”
NYT
, May 1, 1976; “Market Place,”
NYT
, July 6, 1976.

25
. “Tengelmann Pursuing Mergers,”
NYT
, January 20, 1979; “Tengelmann Unit Buys A&P Shares,”
NYT
, February 22, 1979.

22: THE LEGACY

1
. A&P filed for protection under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code on December 12, 2010.

2
. On consolidation in the manufacturing sector, see Naomi R. Lamoreaux,
The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904
.

3
. McGrath’s speech to the United States Wholesale Grocers’ Association, quoted in
Progressive Grocer
, April 1950, 162.

4
. For an attempt to analyze the economic benefits of entrepreneurship in a rigorous fashion, see William J. Baumol,
The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship
.

5
. 57 F. Supp. 635, 664.

6
. James W. Gruebele, Sheldon W. Williams, and Richard F. Fallert, “Impact of Food Chain Procurement Policies on the Fluid Milk Processing Industry,”
American Journal of Agricultural Economics
52 (1970), 395–402, found, for example, that vertical integration in milk processing resulted in fewer but larger dairy plants. The economics of vertical integration subsequently changed in ways disadvantageous to A&P. In 1965, the company opened the world’s largest food-processing plant in Horseheads, New York. The Horseheads plant, with 1.5 million square feet under a single roof, was A&P’s first large investment in food manufacturing in decades. It made 550 different products, from canned soup to mayonnaise, all for sale under the trusted Ann Page name. But the rise of television advertising in the 1950s had given a boost to brand-name foods and dulled the appeal of store brands such as Ann Page. As A&P responded to declining sales by closing stores, the Horseheads plant was badly underutilized. It was finally abandoned in 1983. In a neat historical irony, part of its site was later occupied by a retailer that decided not to integrate vertically into manufacturing: Walmart. “Wal-Mart to Hold Grand Opening,”
Corning (N.Y.) Leader
, February 28, 2008,
www.the-leader.com/news/business/x2052202396
, accessed June 10, 2010.

7
. On the Illinois banking laws, see
www.obre.state.il.us/cbt/STATS/br-hist.htm
, accessed June 30, 2010; Tara Rice and Erin Davis, “The Branch Banking Boom in Illinois: A Byproduct of Restrictive Branching Laws,”
Chicago Fed Letter
, May 1, 2007. Colorado’s motor vehicle dealer statute, Colorado Statutes 12-6-120.5, is one of many that bar manufacturers from selling cars to the public. “Liquor Initiatives Stir Up Old Dispute,”
Seattle Times
, August 21, 2010. Alabama’s ban on self-distribution by brewers can be found in Title 28, Chap. 9 of the state code. On professional licensing, see Stephanie Simon, “A License to Shampoo,”
WSJ
, February 7, 2011.

8
. There is an extensive literature on the industrialization of food, explored most eloquently in Michael Pollan,
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
(New York, 2006).

9
. Among the studies comparing chain and independent grocery prices, see FTC,
Chain Store Inquiry: Prices and Margins of Chain and Independent Distributors, Vol. 4
(Washington, D.C., 1933 and 1934); Paul D. Converse, “Prices and Services of Chain and Independent Stores in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois,”
NATMA Bulletin
, October 1931; James L. Palmer, “Economic and Social Aspects of Chain Stores”; Phillips, “Chain, Voluntary Chain, and Independent Grocery Store Prices, 1930 and 1934”; Taylor, “Prices in Chain and Independent Grocery Stores in Durham, North Carolina,” 413.

10
. Data in U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Historical Statistics of the United States
, 324, show that food spending in 1934–35 came to one-third or more of income for households with annual incomes below $1,500, a definition that took in sixteen million households. Per capita consumption and nutrition are in ibid., 328. On inner-city grocery prices, see Donald E. Sexton Jr., “Comparing the Cost of Food to Blacks and to Whites—a Survey,”
Journal of Marketing
35 (July 1971), 45.

11
. Numerous books explore such claims against Walmart; see, for example, Charles Fishman,
The Wal-Mart Effect
; Nelson Lichtenstein,
The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business
; Nelson Lichtenstein, ed.,
Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism
; and Ellen Ruppel Shell,
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

Adelman, M. A.
A&P: A Study in Price-Cost Behavior and Public Policy
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966.

Albion, Robert Greenhalgh.
The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860
. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939.

Alter, Jonathan.
The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Anderson, Avis H.
A&P: The Story of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company
. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2002.

Anderson, Oscar E.
The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

Arnold, Thurman W.
The Bottlenecks of Business
. Washington, D.C.: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1940.

_____
.
The Folklore of Capitalism
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1937.

Bacon, Albion Fellows.
Beauty for Ashes
. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1914.

Barger, Harold.
Distribution’s Place in the American Economy Since 1869
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955.

Baumol, William J.
The Microtheory of Innovative Entrepreneurship
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010.

Baxter, William.
Chain Store Distribution and Management
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928.

Beckert, Sven.
The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Belasco, Warren, and Roger Horowitz, eds.
Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart
. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Brinkley, Alan.
The End of Reform
. New York: Random House, 1995.

_____
.
Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression
. New York: Vintage Books, 1982.

Brody, David.
The Butcher Workmen: A Study of Unionization
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Brown, Stephen A.
Revolution at the Checkout Counter
. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Buehler, Ezra.
Chain Store Debate Manual
. New York: National Chain Store Association, 1931.

Caro, Robert.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power
. New York: Knopf, 1982.

Chase, Stuart.
The Tragedy of Waste
. New York: Macmillan, 1925.

Chase, Stuart, and Frederick John Schlink.
Your Money’s Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumer’s Dollar
. New York: Macmillan, 1927.

Clark, Eleanor Sterling.
Orange, New Jersey, 1806–1956
. Orange, N.J.: Orange Public Library, 1956.

Cohen, Lizabeth.
A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America
. New York: Knopf, 2003.

_____
.
Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Croxton, Frederick E.
A Study of Housewives’ Buying Habits in Columbus, Ohio, 1924
. Columbus: Bureau of Business Research, Ohio State University, 1926.

Dallas, Helen.
Chain Stores Pro and Con
. New York: Institute of Consumer Education, 1940.

Darby, William.
The Story of the Chain Store: A Study of Chain Store Policies and Methods
. New York: Dry Goods Economist, 1928.

Daughters, Charles G.
Wells of Discontent: A Study of the Economic, Social, and Political Aspects of the Chain Store
. New York: Newson, 1937.

Davis, J. E.
Don’t Make A&P Mad
. Privately published, 1990.

Deutsch, Tracey.
Building a Housewife’s Paradise: Gender, Politics, and the American Grocery Store in the Twentieth Century.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Dipman, Carl W., ed.
The Modern Grocery Store
. New York: Progressive Grocer, 1931.

Doerksen, Clifford J.
American Babel: Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age
. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Donohue, Kathleen G.
Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Idea of the Consumer
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Finlay, Paul.
Paul Finlay’s Book for Grocers
. San Francisco: Honig-Cooper, 1924.

Fishman, Charles.
The Wal-Mart Effect
. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.

Flowers, Montaville.
America Chained: A Discussion of “What’s Wrong with the Chain Store.”
Pasadena, Calif.: Montaville Flowers Publicists, 1931.

_____
.
The Japanese Conquest of American Opinion
. New York: George H. Doran, 1917.

Gould, Tony.
A Summer Plague: Polio and Its Survivors
. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.

Gressley, Gene M., ed.
Voltaire and the Cowboy: The Letters of Thurman Arnold
. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1977.

Hawley, Ellis W.
The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Hofstadter, Richard.
The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR
. New York: Knopf, 1955.

Horowitz, David A.
Beyond Left and Right: Insurgency and the Establishment
. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Horowitz, Roger.
Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Huff, Sidney H.
Chain Store Tyranny and the Independent Grocers’ Dilemma
. Pittsfield, Mass.: Sidney H. Huff, 1934.

Ickes, Harold L.
The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes: The First Thousand Days, 1933–1936
. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.

Jacobs, Meg.
Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Jacobson, Judith S.
The Greatest Good: A History of the John A. Hartford Foundation
. New York: John A. Hartford Foundation, 1984.

Jones, Geoffrey, and Nicholas J. Morgan, eds.
Adding Value: Brands and Marketing in Food and Drink
. London: Routledge, 1994.

Kanigel, Robert.
The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
. New York: Little, Brown, 1997.

Kennedy, David M.
Over Here: The First World War and American Society
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Kirstein, George.
Stores and Unions
. New York: Fairchild, 1950.

Koch, Albert Ralph.
The Financing of Large Corporations, 1921–1939
. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1943.

Koehn, Nancy F.
Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust from Wedgwood to Dell
. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001.

Laird, Pamela Walker.
Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing
. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Lamoreaux, Naomi R.
The Great Merger Movement in American Business
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Lebhar, Godfrey M.
Chain Stores in America
. New York: Chain Store, 1952.

Leuchtenberg, William.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940
. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.

Levenstein, Harvey.
Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Lichtenstein, Nelson.
The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business
. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009.

_____
, ed.
Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism
. New York: New Press, 2006.

Mayo, James M.
The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space
. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.

McCraw, Thomas K.
Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

McGarry, Edmund D.
Mortality in Retail Trade
. Buffalo: Bureau of Business and Social Research, 1930.

McGovern, Charles P.
Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

McKay, Ernest A.
The Civil War and New York City
. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1990.