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Geographical space, social space, and the realm of the department store

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Jeanne Catherine Lawrence
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Extract

Over the past decade a number of scholars have examined the rise of the mass production and distribution of goods, and the concurrent emergence of a nineteenth- and twentieth-century consumer society or ‘culture of consumption’. This body of work has featured the department store prominently in several roles: as a venue for the distribution of consumer goods; as a material fantasyland in which women were encouraged to play out their dreams of conspicuous consumption; and as a place of white-collar employment for working-class clerks. Whatever their focus, these accounts generally view all department stores as homogeneous middle-class institutions, located in a similarly consistent ‘downtown’ in any (and all) large American and European cities. There are serious flaws in such a portrayal. Very real distinctions between department stores in a given city and the social implications of these differences in terms of social status and class are not addressed. Further, the contribution of the built environment and urban topography to the shaping of these status and class distinctions and, ultimately, women's shopping experience, is likewise overlooked. This article examines a set of surveys and marketing reports prepared in 1932 for the Higbee Company of Cleveland, Ohio, in order to situate more precisely one department store within its urban context. These sources document the relationship of the Higbee Company to the city's other department stores and in so doing reveal some of the ways in which stratification between and among classes was interpreted in terms of geographical and social space. Examination of the hierarchy of stores that existed in what was at the time the nation's sixth largest city provides a corrective to the image of the department store as a homogeneous democratic phenomenon, and thus provides an invaluable basis for a reinterpretation of the department store as an urban institution in early twentieth- century America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1992 , pp. 64 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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Footnotes

*

Many people have provided encouragement, advice and thoughtful criticisms, for which I am grateful. I would also like to thank the staff of Special Collections at Harvard University's Baker Library. Finally, I am indebted to Jim Wooten, whose close reading and comments have helped make this a far more precise piece of work.

References

1 See the ‘introduction’ to Fox, R.W. and Lears, T.J. Jackson (eds), The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (New York, 1983), ix–xviizGoogle Scholar. See also McKendrick, N., Brewer, J. and Plumb, J.H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington, 1982);Google Scholar Forty, A., Objects of Desire: Design and Society 1750–1980 (London, 1986);Google Scholar Harris, N., ‘The drama of consumer desire’, in Mayr, O. and Post, R.C., Yankee Enterprise: The Rise of the American System of Manufactures (Washington, DC, 1981);Google Scholar Marchand, R., Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, 1985);Google Scholar Williams, R.H., Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1982);Google Scholar Bowlby, R., Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Drieser, Gissing and Zola (New York, 1985).Google Scholar Further references can be found in ‘Women and consumer culture: a selective bibliography’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, II (1989).Google Scholar

2 An important exception focusing on one critical store is Miller, M.B., The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (Princeton, NJ, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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24 Memo from E.H. Stewart, 6 July 1968, ‘Higbee Co. Inventory’ file in ‘Higbee Co., Papers RE: Survey and Reorganization 1933–34’, MSS 77b. 1932–1944, H 634, Special Collections, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. This collection of Higbee Company documents is hereafter referred to as the Higbee Papers.

25 Business Week, 16 September 1931, 11;Google Scholar Plain Dealer, 9 September 1931, 1.Google Scholar

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27 Total Store Sales' chart in ‘Higbee Co. Sales 1932–43’ file; and ‘General Report and Recommendations’, 1, Higbee Papers.

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29 Letters, ‘Correspondence RE: initial survey 1932’ file, Higbee Papers. Both Pridday and Stewart had been involved in previous store reorganizations: ‘Hahne & Co.’ file, Higbee Papers.

30 ‘General Report’, 8.Google Scholar

31 ‘General Report’, 8.Google Scholar

32 ‘Comparison Bureau Report on General Summary: Higbee as Compared with Halle, Lindner, The May Co., Taylor and Bailey’, 1–68. Higbee Papers. Standard methods of department store organization dictated that the square footage allotted to each department be determined monthly by dividing the amount of net sales by the amount of selling area: Letter, F.E. Abbott to Stewart, 20 October 1932, ‘Comparisons Questionnaire’ file, Higbee Papers.

33 For instance, the Radio and Sporting Goods buyer was earning $192 a week, and the buyer for Men's Clothing was paid $288 per week: ‘General Report’, 11–14. All seven of the company's merchandise managers were men: ‘Higbee Co. Miscellany’ file.

34 Saleswomen averaged $17 to $24 per week: ‘General Report’, 14. These wages appear commensurate with those at department stores in other cities during this period: see Bezanson, A. and Hussey, M., Wage Methods and Selling Costs: Compensation of Sales Clerks in Four Major Departments in 31 Stores (Philadelphia, 1930);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sullivan, M.L., Employment Conditions in Department Stores in 1932–33: A Study in Selected Cities of Five States (Washington, DC, 1936).Google Scholar Benson discusses the vast difference in saleswomen's and salesmen's salary scales in Counter Cultures, 190–3.Google Scholar

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36 ‘Number of Sales and Average Sale, 1927–1932’, in ‘Higbee Co. Sales’ file.

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56 ‘Comparison Bureau report on General Summery’, 1. Marchand discusses the ‘woman's viewpoint’ as a role for women copywriters in Advertising the American Dream, 34–5.Google Scholar

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62 Ibid., 2 and pages titled ‘Higbee Increased/Higbee Decreased’.

63 ‘Higbee Decreased’ sheets in ‘Public Opinion’.

64 ‘Public Opinion’, 6.Google Scholar

65 Ibid., 2.

66 ‘Public Opinion’, 2.Google Scholar

67 ‘General Report’, 5.Google Scholar

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70 Ibid., 3.

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73 Ibid., 8, 5, 4–5, 16.

74 Ibid., 18, 2, 36.

75 Letter, Stewart, to Morgan, J.P. & Co., 29 October 1932, ‘Correspondence’ file: ‘General Report’, 7.Google Scholar The wisdom of locating a retail business near its closest competitor, long understood by savvy merchants, was pointed out to economists by Hotelling, Harold in ‘Stability in Competition’, Economic Journal, 39 (1929), 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76 ‘General Report’, 3.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that this apparent attempt at establishing a monopoly on its class of business in the new location is a logical move to have been made by men with railroad, rather than retail, experience.

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