| Chapter 1: | The Chain Store Historically Considered |
My favorite example of this advertising campaign is a mock letter to the editor of a newspaper from a manager of a Thom McAn store, Mr. W. R. Webb of Amarillo, Texas. The letter accompanies a picture of Webb in a tidy suit, with his wife and infant daughter, Anita, who, we find out later, was recently adopted. His letter, which drips with mockery, notes the suffering of his independent competitor, who just built himself a new $5,000 home, and the hard-heartedness of his employer—a Wall Street boss—who just authorized flood relief charity to a hard-struck community. He notes his salary, Christmas bonus, and vacation, his ability to pay off debts, buy furniture, join a good fraternal order, and adopt a baby. He explains how he was unemployed for 3 years before Thom McAn hired him and how he now plans to build a home. He ends by asking the paper to print the letter in big type because it would “serve the chain stores right if everybody who traded with them knew all about them” (Nichols, 1940, p. 222). Some of this had to mitigate the anti-chain store fervor, but it did not turn the tide in favor of the chain stores.
Professor Richard Schragger provides much insight into what he calls the localist movement of the times, dominated by a “producerist” ideology. He argues that the weakening of the anti-chain store movement was partially due to a shift to a more inclusive “consumerist” movement associated with the New Deal. Women and African-Americans, he argues, would find voice in this movement that they could not in the existing world of “small dealers and worthy men” who owned and operated the incumbent retailers (Schragger, 2005, p. 10, citing McCraw, 1984).
Before the chain store tax died, it lived well. The legislation, which survived court scrutiny, emerged as a GLT. The GLT assessed a cumulative, often increasing fee on chains within a particular state. For example, the first store paid no GLT, the second, $10; the third, $20; the fourth, $40. The top rate was in Texas, with $750 per store over 50. These were prohibitive amounts at the time, with one store’s taxes in the most extreme cases equaling the annual salary of one employee, and this at a time when the average chain store was employing perhaps a dozen workers, with a profit of only $950/year (Lebhar, 1952; Ross, 1986).