11. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry, Foods and Food Adulterants, Part 5: Baking Powders (Washington, D.C., 1889), 562–66.
12. Ibid., 588; Law, “Origins of State Pure Food Regulation,” 1117. Several A&P trade cards bore the Doremus endorsement, which was dated July 7, 1888.
13. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 25; Smith, Robert Gair, 73.
14. AG, February 15, 1870, carried an early advertisement for “Metropolitan Paper-Bag Manufactory, Robert Gair Manufacturer and Printer of Paper and Cotton Bags and Jobber of Paper and Twine, 143 Reade St New York.” See also Smith, Robert Gair, 42, 64–66, and Wilbert Henry Ruenheck, “Business History of the Robert Gair Company, 1864 to 1927” (Ph.D. diss.), 9–17.
15. Hunt, Fruits and Vegetables, 9, 35, 43; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry, Foods and Food Adulterants, Part 8: Canned Vegetables (Washington, D.C., 1893), 1020; Brown and Philips, “Craft Labor and Mechanization in Nineteenth-Century American Canning,” 746; Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 37.
16. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 34.
17. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 15–16, 74; Atlanta Constitution, October 15, 1882; Summit County (Ohio) Beacon, January 3, 1883.
18. Furnas, “Mr. George & Mr. John,” 54; “Red Circle and Gold Leaf,” Time, November 13, 1950; John A. Hartford to Arthur Buysee, March 26, 1937, file 157, HFF.
19. Orange Chronicle, March 1, 8, and 15, 1890; “Divided on Whisky,” NYT, June 12, 1890; “Sold Out the Ticket,” NYT, November 11, 1890.
5: THE DEATH OF GEORGE F. GILMAN
1. George F. Gilman v. Anna K. Gilman, 52 Maine 165, 176 (1863).
2. On Nathaniel Gilman’s death and burial, see “Deaths,” JOC, December 28, 1859; “Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions,” NYT, March 24, 1901; “Will of Nathaniel Gilman,” NYT, April 19, 1860; “For the New Surrogate, the Interminable Case of Nathaniel Gilman,” NYT, December 31, 1887. Joanna’s court case is George F. Gilman v. Joanna B. Gilman, 53 Maine 184, 193 (1865). Anna Gilman seems to have been obsessed by the belief that she and her mother were being treated unfairly and continued legal actions for many years.
3. “Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions.”
4. “George Francis Gilman Dead,” NYT, March 4, 1901; “Gilman’s Place of Residence a Big Issue,” NYT, March 13, 1901; “Black Rock Mansion Seized,” New-York Tribune, March 23, 1901; “Gilman’s Idiosyncrasies,” Hartford Courant, October 28, 1901; “The House That Premiums Built Will Fall,” Bridgeport Post, November 22, 1926; Mary K. Witkowski, Bridgeport at Work (Charleston, S.C., 2002), 83; “Gilman Horses Sold,” New-York Tribune, April 17, 1901.
5. “Gilman Chattels at Auction,” New-York Tribune, May 16, 1901; “Frazier Gilman’s Petition,” NYT, April 10, 1901.
6. “Mrs. Hall At Last Tells Her Secret,” NYT, April 11, 1901.
7. “Gilman’s Tea Business,” Hartford Courant, October 25, 1901; Hartford v. Bridgeport Trust Company, 143 F. 558; Norton v. Hartford, 113 F. 1023 (1902).
8. According to “Gilman Heirs Fight New Claim,” Evening World, June 6, 1901, the lawyer representing Gilman’s heirs asserted in court that “there was nothing in the books to show that Hartford had a dollar’s interest, and he appeared as a salaried official or employee.” “Accuses Gilman Partner,” NYT, June 7, 1901; “The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company Certificate of Incorporation,” HFF. Hartford’s status as a Home Insurance director is confirmed in that company’s advertisement in NYT, July 11, 1900, and his role at Second National Bank of Orange in NYT, January 10, 1901. Pierson, History of the Oranges to 1921, has an undated photograph of George H. after page 270.
9. “No Tangible Assets,” Hartford Courant, March 26, 1901; Bridgeport Trust Company, Administrator, Appeal from Probate, 77 Conn. 657 (1902).
10. In re Administrators of the Goods, 82 A.D. 186 (1902); “Certificate of Amendment of Charter and Increase of Capital Stock,” October 20, 1902, HFF; Hall v. Bridgeport Trust, 122 F. 163 (1903); Hall v. Gilman, 79 N.Y.S. 303 (1902); “Gilman Estate Settled,” New-York Tribune, July 1, 1903; In re Administrators of the Goods, 92 A.D. 462 (1904); “Ends Claim on Riches,” NYT, January 9, 1904.
11. AG, August 12, 1903. The October 1902 amended certificate of incorporation lists Geo. L. Hartford as president, not George H. Hartford; it is unclear whether this was an error.
6: GEARING FOR BATTLE
1. Financial information was included in George H. Hartford’s court filings in his request for an injunction against the Gilman estate, Hartford v. Bridgeport Trust Company, 143 F. 558, and was reported in “Gilman’s Tea Business,” Hartford Courant, October 25, 1901, and “Legal Notes,” NYT, April 18, 1903; David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York, 2006), 587.
2. On Goldberg, Bowen, see AG, January 3, 1900, 10. The motto belonged to American Grocer and appeared just below the publication’s name.
3. On bargaining and the social tensions involved in grocery shopping, see Tracey Deutsch, Building a Housewife’s Paradise, 14–22. On incorrect measures, see AG, October 26, 1910, 11. The advice on barrels appeared in AG, July 15, 1903, 8; Bacon, Beauty for Ashes, 75; Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1908, 26–29. When the Connecticut legislature appropriated $2,500 for special tests of food purity, state officials found that 254 of 848 samples were not as claimed; AG, July 22, 1896. On similar tests in Minnesota, see AG, October 17, 1906, 10. On the hazards of cans, see AG, February 18, 1903, 11.
4. AG, September 16, 1896, 9; October 27, 1897, 7; December 1, 1897, 8.
5. Barger, Distribution’s Place, 148.
6. Bullock, “History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878,” 61–62, estimates that Great Atlantic & Pacific had approximately 150 stores in 1890 and reached 200 only in 1901. On competing chains, see Bullock, “History of the Chain Grocery Store” (Ph.D. diss.), 51–53, 60–61, 70–72; Hall, “Barney Builds a Business,” 306, 310; AG, July 7, 1897, 7; July 15, 1908, 14; and July 26, 1905, 6.
7. The new Tunison Grocery Company in East Orange, New Jersey, for example, billed itself as a “low price store” at its opening in 1898. AG, January 26, 1898, 10; March 29, 1905, 5; June 17, 1903, 10; and November 25, 1908, 8. The Art Deco logo appears on premium coupons dated 1903 in HFF; the globe logo in New Orleans Daily Picayune, January 15, 1901, 1; the one-line logo in Washington Evening Star, January 12, 1906, 10.
8. AG, April 1, 1903, 15.
9. The claim to being a “direct importer” was made frequently in Great Atlantic & Pacific’s advertising; see, for example, the advertisement reprinted in AG, September 16, 1896, 9. The leading coffee importers are listed in AG, January 12, 1898, 22; and January 18, 1905, 26. AG, November 10, 1909, 23, reports Great Atlantic & Pacific receiving relatively modest consignments of coffee aboard two steamships arriving from Santos, Brazil. On the battle between the coffee and the sugar interests, see “The Sugar-Coffee Fight,” NYT, October 6, 1898, and AG, October 14, 1896; December 23, 1896; January 20, 1897; and January 3, 1900.
10. Reported inventory at the time of George Gilman’s death was over $830,000, and monthly sales were slightly above $400,000; “Gilman’s Tea Business.” AG, February 1, 1905, 7, cited an unnamed grocery in a “great manufacturing center” that turned its stock eleven times a year, versus six times for Great Atlantic & Pacific. By comparison, food retailers in the late twentieth century typically carried inventories equal to about three weeks’ sales.
11. The store count was given as 198 in June 1903, when a federal judge approved the terms of the Hartfords’ takeover; “Gilman Estate Settled,” New-York Tribune, July 1, 1903. The company is estimated to have had 450 stores by 1912; see Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 18. The number of wagon routes is taken from Jersey City of To-Day (Jersey City, 1910), 105; see also Bullock, “History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878,” 65. One example of the company’s new advertising style appeared in the New York Evening World, March 28, 1904.
12. Rick James, “Wa
rehouse Historic District, Jersey City, NJ, State & National Registers of Historic Places Nomination,” 2003, www.jclandmarks.org/nomination-warehousedistrict.shtml, accessed June 1, 2009; Jersey City of To-Day, 105.
13. J. C. Furnas, “Mr. George & Mr. John,” Saturday Evening Post, December 31, 1938, 38.
14. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 16, has a 1903 photograph of a store promoting A&P Elgin Creamery butter. A&P gelatin was advertised in the Daily Picayune, June 15, 1901, 1. Grandmother made one of her earliest appearances in Cleveland Medical Gazette 3 (1888), 290.
15. On the use of the A&P brand in newspaper advertising, see AG, October 31, 1906, 14; lima bean prices are from AG, October 30, 1912, 14. On manufacturer resistance, see AG, March 18, 1908, 9.
16. Wage and price measurements were primitive in the early twentieth century, but the government’s Bureau of Labor estimated that wages rose significantly faster than food prices; see AG, July 22, 1908, 10. On canned salmon, see AG, September 15, 1909, 32. On Uneeda Biscuits, AG, May 29, 1907, 10.
17. Photographs of stores showing premium selections are in Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 15–16. The coupons were published in various shapes and sizes; HFF owns a selection.
18. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., “Premium Catalog” (n.d., but after 1907), HFF. The catalog includes a large selection of furniture, including a couch-bed (650 points) and a carved rocking chair with an imitation leather seat (367 points). Customers who aspired to such gifts would have needed to collect coupons for years. On the relationship with Sperry & Hutchinson, see AG, June 5, 1912, 14.
19. AG, May 3, 1911, 8.
20. AG, July 17, 1907, 8.
21. AG, January 24, 1900, 7; February 8, 1902, 10; December 5, 1906, 12; U.S. Senate, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads, Hearings of the Subcommittee on Parcel Post Under Sen. Res. 56, November–December 1911 (Washington, D.C., 1912), 22, 29, 404–42. Retailer opposition delayed enactment of a parcel-post law until 1912.
22. AG, January 28, 1903, 6; January 4, 1905, 12; June 7, 1905, 6; October 18, 1905, 10; January 10, 1906, 7; July 4, 1906, 7; September 12, 1906, 8; January 1, 1908, 8; May 5, 1909, 8.
23. Resolution of Boston Wholesale Grocers Association, January 20, 1908, RG 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 60th Cong., Petitions and Memorials, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, box 703, HR60A-H16.3, NARA-LA; AG, January 4, 1905, 8; August 7, 1912, 7.
7: THE ECONOMY STORE
1. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 48, 50, 63.
2. On the source of Edward Hartford’s invention, see Ruth Reynolds, “Spotlight Hits Shrinking Hartfords,” New York Sunday News, January 9, 1938. The Reynolds article contains numerous inaccuracies, and further detail is available at www.planetspring.com/pages/04_history.htm, accessed August 29, 2009. The original device was developed by Jules Michel Marie Truffault, an engineer in Paris, but Edward and George H. Hartford acquired the rights in 1903; see U.S. patents 743,995, issued November 10, 1903, and reissue 12,399, dated November 7, 1905. George H. seems to have held a 49 percent stake in the business. Edward’s improvements were protected by patent 803,589, issued November 7, 1904, and subsequent patents. John A. Hartford’s involvement in the auto-parts company is unknown, but he served as a witness on a 1910 patent application filed by Edward; see patent 1,124,612, issued December 10, 1910. The Hartford Shock Absorber was advertised with the slogan “Makes Every Road a Boulevard” in The Automobile, December 30, 1915, 220. Edward apparently liked to write about automotive technology as well as developing it; see his article “What Is a Rotary Motor?” Automobile, November 11, 1915, 879.
3. Letter is quoted in “O.W.S. Biography Notes from 1875–1889,” HFF. The National Horse Show, opening the day after Election Day in November, started in 1883 and quickly became one of New York’s premier society events. The newspapers provided ample coverage not only of the competitions but also of the society luncheons, dinners, and late-night suppers that surrounded the event. For a brief history, see “National Horse Show on Nov. 5 to Inaugurate Formal Entertaining of Society in the City,” NYT, September 25, 1938. Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Hartford are listed in Dau’s Blue Book for 1914 (New York, 1914), 154. John was a member of the National Tea Association.
4. Pennington, “Relation of Cold Storage,” 158.
5. On Taylor, see Kanigel, One Best Way, 370–74, 440. Barger contends that the average retail markup in the grocery industry expanded from 35.5 percent in 1899 to 38.1 percent in 1909; see Distribution’s Place, 70. King, “Can the Cost of Distributing Food Products Be Reduced?” 206; “Reducing the Cost of Food Distribution,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 50 (1913). On peddlers, see Deutsch, Building a Housewife’s Paradise, 28–31.
6. A Chicago wholesaler proposed to create a new retail chain on scientific principles in 1911; see AG, June 24, 1911, 7. The only available reference citing the address of this store is “Background Material on John A. Hartford and the A&P,” binder 1, HFF. See comments of the A&P executive O. C. Adams, who had helped launch the Economy Store, in Progressive Grocer, A&P: Past, Present, and Future (New York, 1971), 18; Bullock, “History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878,” 66; “Red Circle and Gold Leaf,” Time, November 13, 1950.
7. In 1914, the average Economy Store booked sales of $18,159, whereas the average “traditional” Great Atlantic & Pacific store had sales of $50,845. “Stores and Dollar Sales (Fiscal Years),” notebook 8B, HFF; Bullock, “History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878,” 67.
8. FTC, Chain Stores: Growth and Development of Chain Stores, 56; Paul Gaffney, “Dime Stores/Woolworth’s,” St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100342/, accessed July 26, 2009.
9. AG, September 15, 1909, 28; December 8, 1909, 12; Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, 210 U.S. 339; Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park and Sons, 220 U.S. 373.
10. On the tobacco premium measure and mail-order merchants, see letters from independent merchants in RG 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 62nd Cong., Papers Accompanying Specific Bills and Resolutions, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, HR62A-H14.21, box 646, NARA-LA.
11. Marc Levinson, “Two Cheers for Discrimination: Deregulation and Efficiency in the Reform of U.S. Freight Transportation, 1976–1998,” Enterprise and Society 10 (2009), 178–88; comment of John A. Green cited in Printers’ Ink, May 28, 1914, 92.
12. Wilson’s comment is cited in Retail Grocers Protective Union of Pittsburgh and Vicinity to John M. Moran, n.d., RG 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 63rd Cong., Petitions and Memorials, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, HR63A-H12.16, box 465, NARA-LA. Wilson had long been suspicious of big business, having written as early as 1898 that “the modern industrial organization has so distorted competition as sometimes to put it into the power of some to tyrannize over many.” The State, rev. ed. (Boston, 1918), 61.
13. The case, Bauer v. O’Donnell, 229 U.S. 1, made clear that even the owners of patents could not control the prices at which patented goods were sold to the public; Louis D. Brandeis, “Competition That Kills,” Harper’s Weekly, November 15, 1913. McCraw, Prophets of Regulation, 102–105.
14. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, To Prevent Discrimination in Prices and for Publicity of Prices to Dealers and the Public (Washington, D.C., 1915), 3–4.
15. For Westerfeld, see ibid., March 13, 1914, 258; Elmer L. Ralphs (vice president, Ralphs Grocery Company) to C. F. Curry, September 4, 1914, RG 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 63rd Cong., Petitions and Memorials, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, HR63A-H12.16, box 465, NARA-LA. Brandeis’s testimony is in To Prevent Discrimination, January 9, 1915, 14.
16. Charles W. Hurd and M. Zimmerman, “How the Chains Are Taking Over the Retail Field—IV,” Printers’ Ink, October 8, 1914, 36–37; “Taking the Chains by Fields and Their Number in Each—V,” Printers’
Ink, October 15, 1914, 71–72.
17. Charles W. Hurd and M. Zimmerman, “How Big Retailers’ Chains Outsell Independent Competitors—XI,” Printers’ Ink, December 3, 1914, 66; “How Accounting Helps the Chains Outbattle the Independents,” Printers’ Ink, December 17, 1914.
18. To Prevent Discrimination, 89.
19. 38 Stat. 730, secs. 2 and 3. Members of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce noted that while small retailers and wholesalers wanted to let manufacturers fix retail prices, manufacturers themselves evidenced little interest in the subject; many of them happily sold in quantity to chains. Charles W. Hurd and M. Zimmerman, “Why Advertisers and Dealers See Danger in Chain Stores,” Printers’ Ink, September 17, 1914, 68.
20. Macon Daily Telegraph, January 13, 1915; Fort Worth Star-Telegram, January 20, 1915.
21. Bullock, “History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878,” 67; Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Cream of Wheat Co., 224 F. 569.
22. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Cream of Wheat Co., 224 F. 574. When Great Atlantic & Pacific appealed Hough’s decision, it received an even more stinging rebuke from the appellate judges: “We have not yet reached the stage where the selection of a trader’s customers is made for him by the government”; 227 F. 49.
23. E. A. Bradford, “Price Cutting and Price Fixing,” NYT, August 15, 1916. Among the fierce intellectual defenders of manufacturers’ right to fix retail prices was a young graduate student named Sumner H. Slichter, soon to be one of the nation’s most prominent economists, who contended that “price maintenance is not an aggressive device, but on the contrary it is a protective device.” “Cream of Wheat Case,” 411.
24. Repurchases of preferred shares are listed in “New Jersey Co. Transfer Journal,” HFF.
25. The offer notice for the bond issue appeared in WSJ, June 15, 1916. Orders for the bonds “largely exceeded the amount offered”; NYT, June 16, 1916.
26. Robert D. Cuff, “Creating Control Systems: Edwin F. Gay and the Central Bureau of Planning and Statistics, 1917–1919,” 590–95; Kennedy, Over Here, 113–16.
The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America Page 35
