| Chapter 1: | The Chain Store Historically Considered |
He further notes that as a result of this and other anti-chain campaigning in the south, Sears & Roebucks’ 1903 catalog contained a promise to mail goods in unmarked wrappers (Ryant, 1973). Godfrey Lebhar, the first real chronicler of chain stores, describes the challenges that the founder of the United Cigar Stores faced from being fictitiously linked to the “tobacco trust.”5 Lies, rumor mongering, and distortions—in short, the stuff of a modern political campaign—were among the tactics used by opponents to keep mail order firms and chains distant from consumers.
Despite the happy economic climes of the 1920s, the anti-chain store movement began to take shape. A leading researcher of the political economy of the time, Thomas Ross, marks 1927 as the start of the movement, but it was not until the stock market crash of 1929 that the explosion of sentiment affected the nation in general. By 1930, and virtually every year thereafter until the eve of America’s entry into World War II, debating clubs at high schools and colleges argued about chain stores, including such topics as “Resolved: That Chain Stores Are Detrimental to the Best Interests of the American Public” (Ryant, 1973, p. 209). By 1940 a review of all existing debate manuals for college and high school students found them to uniformly contain debate notes on chain stores (Lebhar, 1952, p. 143–144). By 1941 students had other matters to debate, but the 1930s saw a remarkable explosion of anti-chain store legislation, which was motivated by a wistful remembrance of a quieter time. Richard Schragger, a law professor at the University of Virginia, argues that the broad appeal of the anti-chain store movement gathered together such disparate voices as progressives (Brandeis and LaFollette), populists such as Louisiana’s colorful Huey Long, New Dealers (like then Senator Hugo Black), unions, agrarians, farmers, the Ku Klux Klan, and African-American leaders, not to mention incumbent retailers (see Schragger, 2005, p. 3; see also Lebhar, 1952).