| Chapter 1: | The Chain Store Historically Considered |
This passage could be found in any recent management book on Wal-Mart or in the popular writings about the firm. Fishman (2006) dedicated at least two chapters to supplying modern anecdote to the final sentence in this passage.
In 1928 The Nation published an article entitled “Chain Stores: The Revolution in Retailing” by Merryle Rukeyser.4 His writing captured the essence of the process. He noted that the struggle between chain stores and existing retail “is waged less on the issue of size than on that of efficiency” (Rukeyser, 1928, p. 568). He believed that
Commerce in general was frenetically growing through the 1920s, and chain stores were a large part of this growth, but the stock market crash of 1929 and the nation’s plunge into the Great Depression brought forth a fervor of anti-chain store sentiment.
The War on the Chains 1930–1941
Fear and loathing of chain stores were not a creation of the Great Depression, but it was during this period that a confluence of events—from antipathy toward big business and the resurgence of the 19th-century progressive movement—combined to bring the anti-chain store sentiment to national prominence. History Professor Carl Ryant, writing in 1973, relates that early opponents of mail order catalogs—the precursor to the chain in much of rural America—spread rumors that the founders of Montgomery Ward and Sears & Roebuck were African-American.