The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America

by Marc Levinson

  30. C. F. Hughes, “The Merchant’s Point of View,” NYT, January 5, 1936; Thomas F. Conroy, “Threat to Jobbers Seen in Chain Plan,” NYT, January 12, 1936; “A&P Is Ready to Fight,” Business Week, January 11, 1936.

  15: THE FIXER

  1. Among the critics is Mayo, American Grocery Store, 146–47.

  2. Tr 438–39.

  3. Deutsch, “From ‘Wild Animal Stores’ to Women’s Sphere,” 147; Phillips, “Supermarket,” 199.

  4. “Brief for the United States,” 657–58, Danville trial; Adelman, A&P, 65–69, 436; “A&P Help Yourself Store,” WSJ, September 9, 1936.

  5. Gx 188; Tr 818.

  6. Dx 511, 512, box 66; Dx 388, box 67; Gx 221; Tr 983.

  7. E. G. Yonker (Sanitary Grocery Company, Washington) to L. A. Warren (Safeway Stores, Oakland), February 3, 1937, RG 60, General Records of the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, Enclosures to Classified Subject Files, 1930–87, Class 60 enclosures, box 71, NARA-CP.

  8. Gx 194; Tr 849. Wilson, Cart That Changed the World, 88–93, credits the Oklahoma grocer Sylvan Goldman with the invention of the wheeled shopping cart, but did not search for antecedents or competing claimants. Catherine Grandclément, “Wheeling One’s Groceries Around the Store: The Invention of the Shopping Cart, 1936–1953,” in Warren Belasco and Roger Horowitz, eds., Food Chains, 233–51, provides a more thorough and balanced discussion of the development of the modern shopping cart. Both authors agree that the wheeled cart was important in the rapid growth of self-service food retailing.

  9. In 1937, the peak year, A&P paid $2.4 million in chain-store taxes, equivalent to 26 percent of its after-tax profits. Such tax payments fell to $2.1 million in 1938, the year following the first large-scale store closings and supermarket openings. Adelman, A&P, 54.

  10. Patman to Sam Rayburn, August 1, 1938, box 129(A), WPP; Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 1st sess., January 24, 1939, 9.

  11. Patman to McIntyre, PPF 3982, FDR; “Coster-Musica Funeral Is Held,” Associated Press, December 19, 1938; “End M’Gloon’s Examination in Fraud Case,” Bridgeport (Conn.) Times-Star, April 19, 1940; “Head of Old Drug Firm Commits Suicide After Fantastic 15-Year Hoax,” Life, December 26, 1938, 18–19. See also the April 1940 correspondence between Patman and Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, box 37(B), WPP.

  12. “Hughes Springs, Texas,” Handbook of Texas Online, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/hjh14.html, accessed December 2, 2009; Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 5936, June 17, 1937; Patman, “Absentee Ownership,” Vital Speeches of the Day, November 15, 1938, 71; “Fortune Survey,” Fortune, January 1937, 154.

  13. Patman to “Dear Friend,” June 23, 1936, box 90(A), WPP; “Manufacturers Likely to Get Early Benefits Under Chain Store Law,” WSJ, July 2, 1936; “New Patman Bill Aimed Directly at Chain Stores,” WSJ, October 5, 1936.

  14. Tr 18050; “Great A&P Tea Co.,” WSJ, January 1, 1936. On Ewing’s long and colorful career, see “Caruthers Ewing Dies at 75,” Memphis Press-Scimitar, August 20, 1947. On his predecessor, see the obituary “Charles H. O’Connor, Ex-Counsel to A&P,” NYT, January 21, 1946. John had begun to speak of working with grocery manufacturers to fight chain-store taxes as early as March 1935, but had taken no action; Gx 162; Tr 738.

  15. Fulda, “Food Distribution,” 1092–1100; “Forcing Price Law Issue,” Business Week, September 5, 1936.

  16. “First Price Probe Started by FTC,” WSJ, August 8, 1936; “A&P ‘Within Law,’” WSJ, August 28, 1936; “This Is Business!” Time, April 12, 1937; “New Buying Policy Adopted by A&P Following Patman Act,” WSJ, March 30, 1937; “Robinson-Patman Act Unlawful Says A&P,” WSJ, February 9, 1937; “Brief for the United States,” 245, Danville trial.

  17. See W. A. Ayres (chairman, Federal Trade Commission) to Roosevelt, April 14, 1937, and Roosevelt to Vice President John Nance Garner, April 24, 1937, Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 7490, July 23, 1937; Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 5911–14, 5936; Rayburn to Walter D. Adams (editor, Texas Druggist), June 22, 1937, box 3R275, SRP.

  18. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 223.

  19. Helen Woodward, “How to Swing an Election,” Nation, December 11, 1937, 638–40; Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 224–33; T. Eugene Beatty, “Public Relations and the Chains,” Journal of Marketing 7 (1943), 250; California Chain Stores Association, Fifty Thousand Percent Chain Store Tax, 11, 26.

  20. “‘Loss Leader’ Lost,” Business Week, February 29, 1936, 14; “Kroger Grocery, Great A&P Hit by New Kentucky Tax,” WSJ, May 11, 1936; “New Chain Store Tax Proposed,” WSJ, October 3, 1936; Sphere 19 (March 1937), in box 37(B), WPP; “State Chain Store Taxes,” RG 56, General Records of the Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Policy, Division of Research and Statistics, Subject Files, box 13, NARA-CP; “4 More States Consider Taxing Chain Stores,” WSJ, June 5, 1937; “A&P Sues to Test Minnesota Price Law for 10% Mark-Ups,” WSJ, September 2, 1937; “Anti–Chain Store Bill,” WSJ, May 7, 1937.

  21. “Chainsters’ Tussle,” Time, June 14, 1937; “State Drops Milk Action Against Atlantic & Pacific,” WSJ, June 25, 1936; “N.Y. Chain-Store Tax Proposal,” WSJ, January 7, 1938; Tr 17407-2, Dx 499.

  22. “A&P Goes to the Wars,” Fortune, April 1938, 134; Tr 19746. Later that year, Catchings was to make John Hartford one of the first U.S. subscribers to a service that pumped music into customers’ homes, marketed under the name “Muzak.” See “Muzak Music,” Time, November 1, 1937.

  23. “Carl Byoir Dead; Publicist Was 68,” NYT, February 4, 1957; “Cultivating Cuba,” Time, June 2, 1930.

  24. Byoir to Marvin McIntyre, October 2, 1934, PPF 3982, FDR; “To War,” Time, March 7, 1932.

  25. Joseph L. Cohn to uncertain recipient, May 29, 1933, PPF 3982, FDR; “Doherty Week,” Time, January 16, 1933; Gould, Summer Plague, 60; “FDR: Day by Day,” FDR.

  26. Byoir’s relationship with Roosevelt was sufficiently jovial that the president bet a necktie that the 1935 ball would raise less than raised in 1934. Roosevelt lost. “President Gets Birthday Ball Funds Report,” Washington Post, November 20, 1935; PPF 2176, FDR. Byoir to McIntyre, October 2, 1934; Early to Byoir, October 5, 1934, PPF 3982, FDR; “Party at Hotel Opens Its Season at Coral Gables,” Washington Post, December 6, 1936; McIntyre to E. M. Watson, memo, November 6, 1935; Watson to McIntyre explaining why such a promotion was impossible, memo, November 9, 1935, PPF 2176, FDR; Early to Byoir, January 14, 1938, Stephen T. Early Files, box 1, FDR. Byoir’s White House visits, with the exception of the one on inauguration eve 1937, are in Pare Lorentz Chronology, FDR; “President Is Host to Campaign Aides,” NYT, January 20, 1937.

  27. Tr 19752.

  28. Tr 19755.

  29. Tr 19763; “Campaign Planned to Fight Chain Tax,” NYT, March 1, 1938; “Chain Tax Fought by Trade Groups,” NYT, March 2, 1938; “Chain Tax Measure Argued at Albany,” NYT, March 3, 1938. On the Buffalo dairy situation, see “Report on Progress of Food Chain Investigation, March 30, 1942,” RG 122, Records of the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Economics, Records of Roy A. Prewitt, box 6, NARA-CP.

  16: FRIENDS

  1. Wright Patman, “Happy New Year for Chain Stores?” Barron’s, December 27, 1937, 3; Patman to “Dear Colleague,” January 15, 1938, box 37(B), WPP; FTC, “In the Matter of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company,” Docket No. 3031, “Finding as to the Facts and Conclusion,” January 25, 1938, and press release, January 26, 1938. Patman also asked the FTC to probe the Hartfords’ newest venture, Woman’s Day, a glossy magazine started in 1937 that sold for two cents per copy only at A&P. Patman fumed that the magazine was an attempt to skirt the Robinson-Patman provision requiring that advertising allowances be paid proportionately to all retailers: instead of granting allowances, he thought, manufacturers might pay off A&P by purchasing ads. The FTC took no action.

  2. The original text proposed by Patman to his co-sponsors is in box 37(C), WPP; Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 3rd sess., F
ebruary 14, 1938.

  3. “Patman to Reintroduce Chain Store Tax Bill,” WSJ, June 21, 1938. Estimated costs of the tax in 1938 appear in Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 241. Due both to the impending tax bill and to the shift to supermarkets, most chain grocers’ store counts fell sharply during 1938; A&P, for example, had 13,268 stores in February 1938, including a couple hundred in Canada, but only 10,835 stores one year later. Chain-store interests estimated later in 1938 that the legislation would cost A&P $472 million a year and twenty-three other chains a collective $385 million. Sears, Roebuck, the second-largest U.S. retailer, was not on the list, but it estimated that the Patman bill would cost it $20 million a year; “1937 Was Best Year for Sears, Roebuck,” NYT, March 23, 1938.

  4. “Patman Offers Bill to Tax Chain Stores,” WSJ, February 15, 1938; Patman comment of February 18, 1938, in Ways and Means Committee, Committee Papers, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 75th Cong., RG 233, box 329, NARA-LA; Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Annual Message to Congress,” January 3, 1938.

  5. Bernard Kilgore, “Crackdown on the Chains,” WSJ, February 23, 1938.

  6. “Chain Tax Fought by Trade Groups,” NYT, March 2, 1938; Congressional Record, 75th Cong., 3rd sess., app., 893; Patman speech to National Retail Lumber Dealers Association, Washington, D.C., May 10, 1938, box 37(B), WPP. A variety of speeches and materials from 1938 anti-chain efforts are in boxes 37(A), (B), and (C), WPP. In one tiny example of the conflict between individuals’ interests as consumers and as producers, the April 1, 1938, issue of The Farmers’ Friend, the Louisiana Farmers’ Protective Union newspaper, criticized A&P for selling two pints of strawberries for twenty-five cents, barely above cost, even as it ran an A&P advertisement touting five pounds of sugar for twenty-five cents at the stores in Ponchatoula and Hammond; OF 288, FDR. See also Hass, “Social and Economic Aspects of the Chain Store Movement” (Ph.D. diss.), 166.

  7. Patman to Roosevelt and to Robert H. Jackson (assistant attorney general for antitrust), April 24, 1938, box 37(B), WPP; Roosevelt, “Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies,” April 29, 1938, John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15637, accessed December 24, 2009; Public resolution 113, 75th Cong.; Harold E. Hufford and Watson G. Caudill, Preliminary Checklist of the Records of the Temporary National Economic Committee (Washington, D.C., 1944), iii–vi.

  8. Legislative Reference Service to Patman, March 24, 1938, box 37(C), WPP; “A&P Goes to the Wars,” Fortune, April 1938, 96.

  9. Tr 19763.

  10. See testimony of Raymond C. Baker, Tr 14182; “Brief for the United States,” 1046, Danville trial; “Victor Schiff, 53, a Publicist Here,” NYT, December 17, 1959.

  11. OF 172, box 5, FDR.

  12. The Patman appointment in Roosevelt’s office is noted in the Pare Lorentz Chronology, FDR.

  13. Silverman, “Hours of Work in Retail Trade” (master’s thesis), 19; “In New Jersey,” NYT, January 7, 1916; “Grocery Clerks Out, Ask Shorter Hours,” NYT, September 7, 1916; Brody, Butcher Workmen, 130; Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Three Score Years and Ten, 47; Retail Clerks International Advocate, September–October 1932, 2. Nationwide membership in the Retail Clerks International Protective Association, which represented principally grocery-store clerks, fell from 21,200 in 1921 to 10,300 in 1923, and was so low by the end of the decade that the union canceled its national convention; Silverman, “Hours of Work in Retail Trade,” 45.

  14. Retail Clerks International Advocate, July–August 1932, 12.

  15. “Labor Moves on the Chains,” Business Week, November 3, 1934; “A&P Exodus,” Time, November 5, 1934; “Atlantic & Pacific Brothers,” Time, November 12, 1934; John Hartford to “Dear Friend,” November 10, 1934, HFF; “‘Out of Cleveland’ Says A&P Head,” NYT, October 30, 1934; “A&P Reopens Cleveland Stores,” Retail Clerks International Advocate, November–December, 1934, 1.

  16. Brody, Butcher Workmen, 137; John A. Hartford to Mr. Connors (unidentified), August 11, 1937, file 157, HFF.

  17. John A. Hartford to Charles Roppelt (store manager, New York), December 31, 1936, file 157, HFF.

  18. Chester Wright’s role was revealed publicly by David A. Munro, publisher of an advertising newsletter called Space and Time, in the issue of February 5, 1940, box 37A, WPP; Tr 1,331.

  19. Brody, Butcher Workmen, 142; United Grocery Worker “Strike Bulletin,” May 4, 1937, and United Warehouse Workers Union Local 205 National Tea Organization Committee, March 22, 1937, both in Sidney Lens Papers, box 49, CHS. Another CIO union later charged that A&P supervisors were forcing workers to sign cards pledging that they would not join a CIO union; “The Union Organizer,” 1941, United Grocery and Produce Employees Union, Local 329, CIO, in Sidney Lens Papers, box 50, CHS.

  20. Tr 1290; Brody, Butcher Workmen, 138–39; “Brief for the United States,” 1056, Danville trial; W. C. Gilbert (acting director, Legislative Reference Service) to Patman, October 28, 1938, box 37(C), WPP; American Federation of Labor, Report of the Fifty-eighth Annual Convention, 424, 570; “A&P Signs with Five A.F. of L. Unions in Washington, Chicago,” WSJ, November 16, 1938; Roat, “Current Trends in Public Relations,” 515; “A&P and the Unions,” Space and Time, box 37(A), WPP; Retail Clerks International Advocate, November–December 1938, 10. Among A&P’s opponents were the construction unions, which objected to A&P’s use of non-union construction labor. See Bricklayer, Mason, and Plasterer, December 1938, 70.

  21. Tr 14229; “A&P Backs Fight on ‘Hidden Taxes,’” NYT, August 12, 1936; “A&P Gives $2,000 to Aid Study of Living Costs,” WSJ, August 12, 1938.

  22. Tr 19768; Temporary National Economic Committee, “Problems of the Consumer,” pt. 8 of Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, 3393; Gx 4406, Tr 14763.

  23. “The NCTC News,” November 1938, Dx 859, box 66; Temporary National Economic Committee, Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, 3391. For examples of the National Consumers Tax Commission’s self-promotion, see “Magnate Pays Way for Women to Dig into Civic Tax Spending,” St. Petersburg (Fla.) Evening Independent, March 29, 1940; “Mrs. S. C. Scott Leads New Unit to Study Taxes,” Tulia (Tex.) Herald, February 16, 1939; Phillips, “Chain, Voluntary Chain, and Independent Grocery Store Prices, 1938,” 24–29.

  24. “A&P Opens Fight on Chain Tax Bill,” NYT, September 15, 1938; “Wide Praise Won by A&P Campaign,” NYT, September 18, 1938. According to Byoir, the statement was drafted by himself after fifteen or sixteen meetings with both Hartford brothers, with another five or six meetings to revise the draft statement before its release; Tr 19776.

  17: DEFYING DEATH

  1. Patman to Roosevelt, telegram, July 15, 1938; Patman to McIntyre, July 16, 1938; McIntyre to Patman, July 16, 1938; press release, July 16, 1938, all box 77(C), WPP.

  2. Patman to Rayburn, telegram, July 28, 1938; Rayburn to Patman, July 30, 1938; Patman to Martin Dies, August 1, 1938; Ewing Thomason to Patman, August 23, 1938; Patman to Thomason, August 31, 1938; Patman to Ed Gossett, August 31, 1938; Patman to Sam Hanna, October 3, 1938; Patman to Rayburn, October 21, 1938; Patman to J. E. Josey, Houston Post, October 22, 1938; Patman to Hanna, October 28, 1938; Bankhead and Rayburn to Patman, January 2, 1939, all box 129(A), WPP; Patman to Frank E. Mortenson (California Retail Druggists’ Association), September 11, 1938, box 37(B), WPP.

  3. “Dies Opens War on Propagandists,” NYT, August 4, 1938.

  4. South Trimble (clerk of the House) to Patman, July 29, 1938, box 37(C), WPP; Patman to Walter Rice (attorney, antitrust division), September 29, 1938, and Patman to Roosevelt, November 25, 1938, box 37(B), WPP; Roosevelt to Patman, November 30, 1938, OF 288, FDR; “Colorado No,” Time, November 21, 1938.

  5. Patman to “Dear Colleague,” n.d., box 37(B), WPP.

  6. “Charges Half-Truths Used by Proponents of Chain Store Taxes,” WSJ, December 31, 1938; “A&P Head Says Chain Stores Face Crossroads in History,” WSJ, January 3, 1939; Geo. M. Roberts (superintendent of weights and measures
, District of Columbia) to Patman, November 2, 1938, box 37(C), WPP.

  7. Frank Parker Stockbridge, “Battle of the Chains,” Barron’s, February 27, 1939; “Brief for the United States,” 1057, 1060, Danville trial; Mark Levy, Chain Stores: Helpful and Practical Information for a Real Estate Broker (Chicago, 1940), 62.

  8. Dx 860, box 66; Minsky, “Propaganda Bureaus as ‘News Services,’” 679; “Boomerang,” Time, January 30, 1939; “Oppose Patman Chain Store Bill,” WSJ, February 4, 1939; Byoir to Early, January 10, 1939, and Early to Byoir, January 13, 1939, Stephen T. Early Papers, box 1, FDR; “Chains Agree to Fight ‘Anti’ Laws Collectively,” WSJ, October 17, 1938. The offer to Farley was reported in Ray Tucker’s “National Whirligig” column on April 6, 1939.

  9. “Elliott Roosevelt Got $200,000 from Head of A&P, Lawyer Says, Repaid $4,000,” NYT, June 13, 1945.

  10. “Reporting the Matter of the Loan of John A. Hartford to Elliott Roosevelt,” House of Representatives Report No. 1033, 79th Cong., 1st, sess., October 1, 1945, 8; “Gen. Roosevelt Borrowed $600,000,” NYT, September 16, 1945. Elliott Roosevelt claimed that his father “never promoted or assisted my personal business affairs”; “Elliott Roosevelt Brands as a Lie Tale That Father Helped in Loans,” NYT, August 1, 1945, but he did not deny that President Roosevelt spoke with Hartford about the loan.

  11. “A Loan from the Grocer,” Time, June 25, 1945; Jesse Jones, Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC (New York, 1951).

  12. “Scandal or Slander?” Washington Post, June 15, 1945; Westbrook Pegler to Patman, August 7, 1945, and Patman to Pegler, August 9, 1945, box 119(A), WPP; Patman to Robert L. Doughton (chairman, Ways and Means Committee), September 29, 1945, box 102(A), WPP.

  13. “Patman Chain Tax Said to Have Only Slight Chance,” Progressive Grocer, February 1939, 163; Gerrit Vander Hooning (president, National Association of Retail Grocers) to Roosevelt, February 11, 1939; Early to Vander Hooning, February 17, 1939, PPF 2538, FDR; Patman to Roosevelt, May 11, 1939, box 37(B), WPP; May 22, 1939, address to American Retail Federation, in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15763, accessed December 20, 2009; Patman to George Schulte, October 17, 1939, box 37(C), WPP.