Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 December 2011
The following article examines the creation and development of a unique American business institution, the dime store chain. The essay focuses on the store managers—their ethnic, social, and educational background, the rules under which they worked, and the promotion ladder they climbed. It attempts to assess the advantages and disadvantages to the chains of relying on a system of “organization men.”
1 Ada Louise Huxtable, “Remnants of an Era: Two Silent Stores,” New York Times 8 Nov. 1979, sec. 3, p. 1.
2 Samson, Peter, “The Department Store, Its Past and Its Future: A Review Article,” Business History Review 55 (Spring 1981): 26–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out the general neglect of retailing and the need for serious treatment of chain stores. Besides those he cites, the following recent works should be consulted: Benson, Susan Porter, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana, Ill., 1986)Google Scholar; Katz, Donald, The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Leach, William R., “Transformations in a Culture of Consumption: Women and Department Stores, 1890–1925,” Journal of American History 71 (Sept. 1984): 319–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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8 Brough, The Woolworths, 117, points out that Earle Charlton, a Connecticut Yankee, married a Jewish woman.
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27 Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 326–27.
28 James L. Palmer, “Are These Charges Against the Chains True?” Retail Ledger, 1 July 1929, in Chain Stores, ed. Bloomfield, Daniel (New York, 1931), 128–34Google Scholar; “Woolworth's $250,000,000 Trick”; Fortune may not have corroborated Woolworth's account of its New York store manager's earnings, which seem high in comparison to senior executive salaries of the time.
29 Kresge, The S. S. Kresge Story, 263–68, 314–15.
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33 Darby, Story of the Chain Store, 142–43.
34 Sebastian S. Kresge to Howard C. Baldwin, 4 Feb. 1933, and to Charles B. VanDusen, 11 Feb. 1933, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 8.
35 Christopher E. Holzworth to All Stores, 20 Oct. 1936 and 29 Sept. 1937; Holzworth to All Superintendents, 8 Oct. 1937; Charles B. VanDusen to All Store Managers, Superintendents, and District Offices, 28 Oct. 1937, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 3.
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37 Ambrose K. Kunkle to Sebastian S. Kresge, 7 Sept. 1937, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 8.
38 S. S. Kresge Company Papers, box 2, reel 1: 805, 24 Nov. 1936, Michigan Historical Collections.
39 Kresge's, Fortune 21 (June 1940): 70–76ff.Google Scholar, also reported, without corroboration, that top managers earned over $100,000 a year (at a time when top executive salaries and bonuses came to less than $90,000).
40 R. G. Forshee to All Stores, 16 Sept. 1937, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 3; Sebastian S. Kresge to Ambrose K. Kunkle, 6 Nov. 1937, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 8.
41 Anderson-Morrell Associates, The Variety Chain Store Group, 12 May 1937, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 1; Sebastian S. Kresge to Howard Kresky, 3 Oct. 1938, and to Stanley S. Kresge, 10 Oct. 1938, in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 8.
42 Business Week, 26 March 1938, 38–40.
43 Excise Tax on Retail Stores, 2: 1379.
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45 Brough, The Woolworths, 83–84 and 100.
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49 Who's Who Among the Kresge Executives 1920 (Detroit, Mich., 1920)Google Scholar, in Kresge, S. S. Co. Papers, box 1, Michigan Historical Collections. Who's Who in the Kresge Organization (Detroit, c. 1972Google Scholar), in Stanley S. Kresge Papers, box 2, reveals that all were still men and overwhelmingly Protestant, but many Roman Catholics, including those of eastern and southern European origins, two Jews, and two blacks served as store managers. Some of those ethnic minorities joined during the 1960s when Kresge bought other companies that had employed them.
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51 Barton, “The Company Point of View.”
52 Penney, J. C., J. C. Penney: The Man with a Thousand Partners (New York, 1931), 119Google Scholar; Day, Lew V., “Helping 19,000 Salespeople Get Ahead,” Chain Store Age 9 (Aug. 1933): 58–60Google Scholar.
53 Sumner, The W. T. Grant Story, 30 and 45–16. The “transfers” columns in Chain Store Age during the mid-1930s show evidence that variety and general merchandise chains hired new ethnics. S. S. Kresge did not seem to follow that new trend, but the Kresge-Newark Department Store that Sebastian Kresge owned did hire an Italian executive in 1930 and promoted him to president in 1955.
54 “Neisner Bros.,” Chain Store Age 26 June 1950): J 35–37Google Scholar; Benj. Parvin Moore & Associates, Manual of Chain Store Companies (New York, 1917), 32–35, 88–90 and 135–36Google Scholar, provides profiles of the Grand, Metropolitan, and firms, Silver; “H. L. Green,” Chain Store Age 26 (June 1950): J 40–43Google Scholar. Those examples aside, Jews fared less well in chains than in big department stores.
55 Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal (New York, 1990), 118, 154, 235–38Google Scholar, discusses how chains invaded ethnic and racial neighborhoods and began to change hiring practices by the mid-1920s.
56 Darby, Story of the Chain Store, 54; Baxter, Chain Store Distribution and Management, 135–36.
57 Brough, The Woolworths, 80, 101–2, and 109.
58 Baxter, Chain Store Distribution and Management, 135–36; “What Price Success …?”; Weil, S. S., “Why We Use Women as Managers,” Chain Store Age 2 (Feb. 1926): 19–20ffGoogle Scholar.
59 Packard, Vance, The Pyramid Climbers (New York, 1962), 29, 35–37, 101, and 115Google Scholar. Korman, Abraham K., The Outsiders: Jews and Corporate America (Lexington, Mass., 1988), 28, 44, and 132Google Scholar, points out that executive and managerial jobs, interactive by their nature, called for insiders' social acceptability; during the 1920s, even as Jews did well as entrepreneurs in retailing, as outsiders they did not often find jobs with chain stores, which may have feared adverse reactions from customers.
60 Brough, The Woolworths, 206.
61 Kresge, The S. S. Kresge Story, 283–301.
62 Among all the other major variety store chains, only Woolworth and McCrory, which under the management of new men bought out several of the others, survive.