The Great A and P and the Struggle for Small Business in America Part 3

8. U.S. Department of Commerce, Census of Distribution: Kansas City, Missouri, mimeo, October 25, 1927. The 1930 Census of Retail Distribution counted 481,891 food stores and another 104,089 general stores that sold groceries in 1929, for a total of 585,980 stores whose main business was selling food. On wholesalers, see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census: Census of Distribution. Wholesale Distribution (Trade Series): Groceries and Food Specialties (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1933), 16, 38, 4244. That census shows 47,132 establishments "producing goods sold through grocery trade channels," but the tabulation does not include the 2,443 meat and poultry plants and numerous plants making such items as candles, patent medicines, toiletries, and tobacco products shown in U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, 1933 (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: 1933), 697716. The United States had 29.9 million families in 1930; Statistical Abstract, 1933, 48.

9. Total employment in food retailing in 1929, including employees and proprietors in food stores and general stores selling food, was 1.2 million. Employment in food wholesaling was 187,766 and in manufacturing 753,247, yielding a total of more than 2.1 million workers out of a nonfarm workforce of 38 million. Industry employment from 1930 Retail Census, 45, and the 1930 Census of Distribution.

10. Food accounted for $17.9 billion of the $71.8 billion of consumer spending in 1925, or 25 percent. Based on patterns a few years later, for which more detailed information is available, approximately 80 percent of all food spending was for at-home consumption, with purchased meals and alcoholic beverages accounting for the rest. The food component alone thus accounted for roughly twenty cents of every dollar of consumer spending. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 319, ser. 41922; 320, ser. 47071; 323, ser. 84445; and 326, ser. 77374. With the 1967 level set equal to 100, food consumption per capita in 1925 was 86; not until 1940 did the index reach 90. Although diets had plenty of calories, they were short on nutrients such as calcium and thiamine. See Historical Statistics of the United States, 328, ser. 84965.

11. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 83.

12. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Das Kapital, vol. 3 (Hamburg, 1894), 303; William Graham Sumner, "The Forgotten Man" (1883), in The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays, ed. Albert Galloway Keller (Manchester, N.H., 1969), 491.

13. Ian Melville, Marketing in j.a.pan (Oxford, 1999), 195; Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise, December 30, 1973, 14142.

14. "Retailers Protest Controversial Law," Prague Post, December 16, 2009.

2: THE FOUNDER.

1. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., Three Score Years and Ten, 5. This official company version of history was accepted in the most widely cited work on U.S. chain retailing, G.o.dfrey Lebhar's Chain Stores in America, 21, and propagated in such prominent places as a front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, "A&P's Saga Includes a PaG.o.da, Price Wars, and Buying Brigades," WSJ, December 19, 1958, and Barron's, February 20, 1922, 10. The official story was reiterated in the announcements that accompanied the opening of new stores, prompting further embellishment. For example, the Hartford Courant, October 25, 1924, reported that the store George H. Hartford opened on Vesey Street in 1859 was "the first grocery store to operate on a strictly cash basis. The front of the store was painted a brilliant red and this was the origin of the red-front chain-store idea." In fact, both the sale of groceries and the red color scheme developed many years after 1859, and many other firms sold groceries on a cash-only basis much earlier. Peter Coclanis wrote in The Encyclopedia of New York History, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson (New Haven, Conn., 1995), that Great Atlantic & Pacific "was formed as a partners.h.i.+p in 1859. It initially had one tea shop on Vesey Street." No available evidence supports the date, the address, or the existence of a partners.h.i.+p. The company contributed to the confusion surrounding its origins by changing its foundation myth several times. An 1867 advertis.e.m.e.nt stated that the Great American Tea Company, indisputably the predecessor of Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, was "established 1861"; Commercial Enterprise, Great American Tea Company, HFF. When Great Atlantic & Pacific issued bonds for the first time in 1916, it told investors, "The present business was started in 1858"; WSJ, June 15, 1916. In advertising a dozen years later, it described the Great American Tea Company, progenitor of A&P, as "Roasters of Good Coffee Since 1856." See "The Great American News," folder 431, HFF. The story of George H. Hartford buying an entire cargo of tea in 1859 was presented in court in 1945 by an attorney for the company; Tr 84.

2. As one example of the legends and misstatements of fact that developed over time, a website of the Harvard Business School library offered the following history: "The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company arose from the partners.h.i.+p created in 1859 between George Huntington Hartford and George Francis Gilman. Using Gilman's connections as a grocer and son of a wealthy s.h.i.+p owner, Hartford purchased coffee and tea from clipper s.h.i.+ps on the docks of New York City. By eliminating middlemen, the partners were able to sell their wares at 'cargo prices.' This venture was so successful that in 1869 Hartford and Gilman opened a series of stores under the name Great American Tea Company"; www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/chrono.html?company=the_great_atlantic_pacific_tea_company_inc, accessed May 10, 2009. There is no evidence that Gilman was ever a grocer or that he and Hartford were partners in 1859. The earliest known use of the Great American Tea Company name was in 1863.

3. Norcross, History of the New York Swamp, 12425. The New York Business Directory for 1840 and 1841 (New York, 1840), 55, confirms that Nathaniel Gilman was running Gilman, Smull & Company at 11 Ferry Street in Manhattan in 1840. The description of Nathaniel Gilman is from "Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions," NYT, March 24, 1901. For background on the leather trade in New York, see Scoville, Old Merchants of New York City, 25262, and Ellsworth, "Craft to National Industry in the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss.), 10029.

4. Rode's New York City Directory, 185152, compiled in the spring of 1851, showed George F. Gilman with a hides business at 35 Spruce Street and his older brother, Nathaniel Gilman Jr., with a leather business at 72 Gold Street, which was also the location of Nathaniel Gilman & Son, leather dealers. The following year, Rode's listed George's hides business at 17 Ferry Street, just down the block from the leather business of his brother Winthrop W. Gilman at 7 Ferry Street, while the 35 Spruce Street location was occupied by Nathaniel Gilman Jr. and Nathaniel Gilman & Son. Winthrop was still at 7 Ferry, where he would remain for many years. Winthrop, born in 1808, had moved to Sullivan County, New York, in 1846, where he bought forests and built tanneries at a place that became known as Gilman's Station. That area, in the town of Forestburgh, is said to have had thirty-nine tanneries producing 100,000 sides of leather annually in the 1850s. "A Millionaire's Lonely Death," NYT, December 8, 1885; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestburgh,_New_York, accessed May 1, 2009.

Nathaniel senior also was known for lending money; Trow's New York City Directory for 185657, 316, gives George Gilman's business as "exchange," suggesting that he may have collected debts for his father.

5. The 1850 census has a leather dealer named Nathaniel Gillman, age thirty-five, born in Maine, living in Ward 2, Brooklyn, with his wife, two children, and three servants. On construction of the Gold Street building, see Norcross, History of the New York Swamp, 38; the 1857 William Perris map of New York, sheet 5, shows 98 Gold to be a frame building with a store attached. New York City tax records show that the two buildings on the site were replaced in 1858 with a five-story structure containing about seven thousand square feet of s.p.a.ce; see Record of a.s.sessments, 4th Ward, 1858, 26, and 1859, 24, NYMA. Trow's for 1859 lists George F. Gilman, hides, at 98 Gold Street and at 55 Frankfort Street, just around the corner. Many newspaper reports have the wrong date of death for Nathaniel Gilman, and some confuse him with his eldest son, also Nathaniel, who predeceased him.

6. Trow's New York City Directory for 186061, which was compiled prior to June 2, 1860, shows both a John S. Hartford and a George W. Gilman in "Teas" at 98 Gold Street.

7. This version of George Hartford's life appears in Whittemore, Founders and Builders, 209, which was probably checked with George H. Hartford. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 9, states that George Hartford met Gilman in St. Louis and began working for him there; their common roots in central Maine would have provided a natural link. According to an alternative explanation of the Gilman-Hartford relations.h.i.+p, John S. Hartford is said to have known George Gilman from living in the same town in Maine and supposedly asked Gilman to allow him to store tea in the Gold Street warehouse and finance him to peddle tea across the country. John S. Hartford's health then supposedly worsened, and George H. Hartford came from St. Louis to take over the tea wagon. "O.W.S. Biography-Initial Notes (1700 through 1874)," HFF. This story is not credible for a variety of reasons: the Hartfords and Gilman did not live in the same town in Maine; John Hartford is listed in a directory as an "agent" for Gilman's leather business in St. Louis; and the brothers appear to have moved to New York around the same time. The 1850 census, Boston Ward 9, Suffolk, Ma.s.sachusetts, roll M432_337, 192, image 39, shows a George W. Hartford, aged eighteen, and a John S. Hartford, fifteen, boarding in the house of Ignatius Sargent and his wife, Sarah. It is not certain that these are the correct Hartfords; George's correct middle initial was H, not W, and both ages given are one year older than the brothers' actual ages in June 1850. However, the age spread between the two is correct, both are listed as having been born in Maine, and neither appears in the 1850 census record for Maine, indicating that they were living in another state. John S. Hartford filed a pa.s.sport application in Boston in January 1855, giving his age as nineteen and his birthplace as Maine. It is uncertain where he traveled. Kennedy's St. Louis Directory, 1859 confirms that Gilman had an office in St. Louis and that both Hartfords were working for him there in 1859 while living at 75 North Fifth Street.

8. The Hartfords' presence in Maine in June 1860 is confirmed in U.S. Bureau of the Census, United States Federal Census, 1860, Augusta, Kennebec County, Maine, M653_441, 12122. Despite the lack of evidence that either Gilman or Hartford was selling tea or coffee in 1859, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, long since free from the Hartford family's control, held fast to the story; in September 2008 it received a U.S. trademark for the slogan "America's Coffee Provider Since 1859," U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, registration number 3,522,886. Wilson's New York City Business Directory for 1860 listed George F. Gilman as "Hide and Leather Dealer" and Gilman & Company as "Importers of Tea" at 98 Gold Street. Gilman is also shown as being in the leather business in an 1860 credit-agency book. See Roy J. Bullock, "The Early History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company," Harvard Business Review 11 (1933), 290.

9. Gilman had sufficient wealth and income to be liable for the wartime income excise tax imposed in 1863. The carriages, watches, and piano, along with an income of $4,959, appear on the 1866 tax report, series M603, roll 82, frame 507, NARA-NY. On the increasing separation between firm owners and workers, see Wilentz, Chants Democratic, and Beckert, The Monied Metropolis.

10. Albion, Rise of New York Port, 189, 203, 401. JOC, February 4, 1859, as one example, carried seven advertis.e.m.e.nts from hide dealers, although Gilman & Company appears not to have advertised in the newspaper either before or after it began to sell tea. While packet s.h.i.+ps had made the trip from China in less than three months since around 1840, the clippers were typically larger and could carry much more cargo. John H. Morrison, History of New York s.h.i.+p Yards (New York, 1909), contains detailed information on many of the American-built clippers. On the new fas.h.i.+on for tea, see, among other articles, "Tea," Atlantic Monthly, February 1858, 446; "Tea Culture in the United States," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1859, 762; "Tea for the Ladies, and Where It Comes From," G.o.dey's Lady's Book, May 1860, 301; "Tea-Growing in India," NYT, March 23, 1862.

11. Bullock, "Early History," 290, and "History of the Chain Grocery Store" (Ph.D. diss.), 1821; Albion, Rise of New York Port, 187, 28384; Carhart, "New York Produce Exchange," 214. A tea chest did not have a standard weight, and could contain anywhere from 80 to 110 pounds of tea, depending upon the origin; "half-chest" was a euphemism for a small chest, which typically held more than half the weight of a full chest. Coffee and tea auctions were held several times a week at merchants' rooms in lower Manhattan around 1860; on February 2, 1859, for example, L. M. Hoffman & Company, auctioneer, sold 150 packages of undamaged teas arriving on the vessels Argonaut, Horace, and Eagle Wing, and 5,000 packets and bags of Java coffee damaged on the voyage. The auction was conducted at its premises in Hanover Square; JOC, February 2, 1859. Albion, Rise of New York Port, 283, states that coffee was auctioned at the New York Produce Exchange in the 1850s, but this could not have been true, as the exchange was organized only in 1860 and opened its building in 1861; exchange records for the 1860s make no mention of tea or coffee being traded there.

12. NYT, April 23, 1858, reported poor prices at an auction sale of tea and said that the announcement of a coffee auction the following day had depressed private coffee trading. The weekly United States Economist, November 12, 1853, 69, said many tea merchants "have closed their places of business until such time as there is any chance when they can dispose of their goods at a paying price." Although some of the price and quant.i.ty information was obtained from public auctions, the vast majority concerned private sales and was derived from sources that were rarely disclosed. Quotation is from D. Stoddard, Boston, to Solomon Townsend, New York, October 9, 1847, in Townsend Family Papers, box 4, N-YHS.

13. On conditions in the Swamp during this period, see Norcross, History of the New York Swamp, 126; and Ezra R. Pulling, M.D., "Report of the Fourth Sanitary Inspection District," in Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens' a.s.sociation of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City, 2nd ed. (New York, 1866). The Gold Street location appears in Trow's New York City Directory, 18601861, 326, the Front Street location in Trow's New York City Directory, 18611862, 323. The 1861 date for the establishment of the Great American Tea Company was used in the company's advertising not long after; see, for example, the notice in New York Teacher and American Educational Monthly 5 (January 1868), back cover. The New York Record of a.s.sessments, 1st Ward, shows that a Jno. Lecount, variously identified as Jona Lecount, purchased 129 Front Street in 1860 and owned it for years thereafter.

14. Albion, Rise of New York Port, 266; New York Produce Exchange, As It Was and As It Is (New York, 1959), n.p. The ledgers of Brown Brothers & Company, one of New York's leading financial firms during this period, offer scattered clues as to how the business functioned. On April 9, 1866, Brown Brothers disposed of damaged coffee from the s.h.i.+p Maria for the account of M. G. Crenshaw & Company, a merchant; only $5,845.29 of the total sale price of $8,212.59 ended up in the Crenshaw account. Brown Brothers & Company Records, vol. 74, 495, NYPL. Addresses of Sturges and Scrymser firms are in s.h.i.+pping and Commercial List, January 21, 1860.

15. Minute Book, 14, 33, and New York Commercial a.s.sociation Members.h.i.+p List, 186163, New York Produce Exchange Papers, N-YHS. Other Produce Exchange records, such as the Complaint Book and the Visitor's Book, offer no evidence that Gilman or anyone connected with his firm was involved with the exchange in any way through at least 1873. The Produce Exchange dealt only in physical commodities during this period; exchange trading in futures contracts had yet to develop.

16. "News from Was.h.i.+ngton," NYT, December 24, 1861; E. M. Brunn, "The New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 155 (1931), 110; Wakeman, Lower Wall Street, 94; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1878), 129.

17. Later in the 1860s, Great American's advertis.e.m.e.nts stated that the company was "Established 1861." See, for example, New York Teacher and American Educational Monthly 5 (January 1868), back cover. Without exception, the merchants belonging to the New York Produce Exchange during the 1860s operated under the names of their owners or partners, and even the city's largest retail merchants, such as A. T. Stewart & Company and R. H. Macy & Company, were called after their owners. The Great American stores operating in May 1863 were at 73 Catherine Street, in the Fourth Ward; 314 Second Street and 372 Grand Street, on the Lower East Side; 545 Eighth Avenue at Thirty-ninth Street; and 45 Vesey Street, a couple of doors down from the new headquarters. New York Herald, May 30, 1863. None of these premises was owned by Gilman; see Record of a.s.sessments, 3rd Ward, various years, NYMA. No descriptions of these shops survive. Gilman's earliest surviving federal tax a.s.sessment, for $10, was paid at the end of 1864.

18. New York Herald, May 27 and 30, 1863. On retailer advertising in this period, see Laird, Advertising Progress, 2331.

19. AG, November 12, 1870, acknowledged that tea "has become the controlling power in the grocery trade," indicating its importance to retailers. Tedlow, New and Improved, 190; Trenton Daily State Gazette, July 28, 1863; Atlantic Democrat and Cape May (N.J.) Register, August 15, 1863; Columbus (Ohio) Crisis, September 16, 1863.

20. Many sources tell Barnum's story, not least Phineas Taylor Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself (New York, 1855). A website prepared by the American Social History Project, www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/intro.html, provides a good introduction. On Great American's horses, see Wakeman, Lower Wall Street, 94. NYT, June 16, 1833; New York Sun, October 28, 1863. Bullock, "Early History," 292, contends that the company used little newspaper advertising during its early years; he apparently was unaware of the many advertis.e.m.e.nts that appeared starting in May 1863.

21. Columbus (Ohio) Crisis, September 16, 1863; New York Herald, September 4, 1863. Circulars announcing the move are in HFF. Already in the 1860s it was possible to engage an advertising agent such as George P. Rowell, who would place a one-inch advertis.e.m.e.nt in one hundred newspapers for a fee of $100; see Laird, Advertising Progress, 73.

22. National Celebration of Union Victories (New York, 1865), 16; Wakeman, Lower Wall Street, 95.

23. The prices quoted in the company's circulars appeared even lower than they were, because they were for New York delivery, leaving customers to pay s.h.i.+pping costs. The economics of Great American's operation are not fully understood, as no records are extant. See Bullock, "Early History," 29295, and Tedlow, New and Improved, 190.

24. The Brooklyn City Directory for the Year Ending May 1st, 1862 (Brooklyn, 1862) is the first to list Hartford, showing his occupation as "clerk." The next directory in which he appears, the 186465 edition, lists him as "book-keeper." His t.i.tle of treasurer is reported in Orange Journal, March 30, 1878. Observations on his personality are from Orange Journal, March 16, 1878; Whittemore, Founders and Builders, 208; Pierson, History of the Oranges to 1921, vol. 4, 270.

3: THE BIRTH OF THE GREAT A&P.

1. Internal Revenue a.s.sessment Lists for New York, Records of the Internal Revenue Service, RG 58, ser. M603, roll 53, frame 643, and roll 58, frame 209, NARA-NY. Great American used 3133 and 3537 Vesey as warehouses and offices, and 45 Vesey for both warehouse s.p.a.ce and grinding.

2. "Light-Weight Dealers," New York World, December 17, 1868.

3. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 8, 1865; s.h.i.+pping and Commercial List, May 15, 1867; "The Commercial Enterprise," file 430, HFF.

4. On the marriage, see Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 47. Marie Josephine Ludlum Hartford, twenty-four at the time of their marriage, was said to be from a well-established family in Goshen, New York, but her name does not appear in the 1860 census reports. The Brooklyn City Directory for the Year Ending May 1st, 1865 lists George H. Hartford as a "book-keeper" living at 67 Powers Street, a few doors down from his initial residence. The edition published in May 1867 has him living at 286 Franklin Avenue in the leafier environs of Bedford-Stuyvesant, but the family apparently had relocated to Orange by the time this was published. Record of Hartford's draft status is in "Registry of Drafted Men, 2d Cong Dst," line 7477, RG 110, entry 1531, NARA-NY; Peter Bruin's enlistment as Hartford's subst.i.tute is in "Navy and Marine Enlistment for 2nd Congressional District of New York," RG 110, entry 1535, and personal information about Bruin is in "Medical Register," RG 110, entry 1534. For background on the draft, see Peter Levine, "Draft Evasion in the North During the Civil War, 18631865," Journal of American History 67 (1981), 81634; Eugene C. Murdock, "New York's Civil War Bounty Brokers," Journal of American History 53 (1966), 25978; and McKay, Civil War and New York City, 215. Hartford's reported income is derived from Internal Revenue a.s.sessment Lists for New York, District 2, ser. M603_44 (1864) and M603_45 (1865). According to McKay, Civil War and New York City, 219, a well-paid clerk at the A. T. Stewart department store earned $500 a year in 1863, but $300 was more typical.

5. On Lucy Stone, see Clark, Orange, New Jersey, 2526, 42.

6. An 1870 city directory, the earliest extant, lists a George H. Hartford, whose business was "teas," as a boarder at 4 Centre Street. Orange Directory for 1870 (Orange, N.J., 1870), 56. This was likely a temporary residence. The location of the Ridge Street house, at the corner of White Street, is now an apartment complex. Information on the occupants is from U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, Orange Ward 1, Ess.e.x, New Jersey, ser. M593_861, roll 324, image 126, RG 29, NARA. On the conversion, see "O.W.S. Biography-Initial Notes (1700 through 1874)," HFF.

7. New York had a hundred tea dealers in 1870. Bullock, "History of the Chain Grocery Store" (Ph.D. diss.), 15. Store count is from Roy J. Bullock, "The Early History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company," 291. The description of the new store appeared in The Brooklyn Daily Times and was reported in Peterson's Magazine 53 (May 1868), 394; the employee count was in Peterson's Magazine 54 (July 1868), 76. Both of these articles emphasized how big and busy Great American's stores were. The company may have sought to emphasize its size and solidity to make mail-order customers confident enough to send in their money.

8. Tradition has the railroad completed with the driving of a golden spike with a silver maul, but this may well be apocryphal; see J. N. Bowman, "Driving the Last Spike at Promontory, 1869," California Historical Quarterly 36 (1957), 26374.

9. Trenton Daily State Gazette, October 15, 1869; Bullock, "Early History," 296. The claim that George H. Hartford's a.s.sociation with A&P dated to 1869 was repeated in Pierson, History of the Oranges to 1921, vol. 4, 27071. Hartford's census declaration is in the 1870 census records, ser. M593_861, roll 324, image 126, RG 29, NARA. The story of the name change was posted for many years on the company's website, www.aptea.com/history_timeline.asp, accessed February 7, 2009. Great American Tea Company was sold to its employees in 1965; see Progressive Grocer, A&P: Past, Present, and Future (New York, 1971), 11.

10. Wakeman, Lower Wall Street, 94; Harper's Weekly, February 8, 1868, 1; AG, December 10, 1870, 581.

11. AG, November 15, 1869. a.s.suming that the average chest weighed 100 pounds, 36,000 chests would have equated to 3.6 million pounds of tea. Net U.S. tea imports in 1869 were 40.8 million pounds. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, 1878, 129.

12. The Great American name was attached to a tea shop as late as the end of 1898, when a newspaper article described its store, still at the corner of Vesey and Church streets, as containing "a miniature Chinese paG.o.da, resplendent with gilt and brilliant carmine." Evangelist, December 6, 1898. On Thea-Nectar, see Bullock, "Early History," 297; Atlanta Daily Const.i.tution, May 23, 1872; "A New Business," Daily Const.i.tution, October 31, 1880. Thea was the name formerly used for the tea-plant genus, now referred to as Camellia.

13. On the growth of brands, see Mira Wilkins, "When and Why Brand Names in Food and Drink?" in Jones and Morgan, eds., Adding Value, 1540; Koehn, "Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the Late Nineteenth Century"; "New Business."

14. "The Tea Trade and Certain Monopolies," AG, November 12, 19, and 26 and December 3, 1870.

15. Bullock, "Early History," 294; "Tea Trade and Certain Monopolies," AG, November 19, 1870, 491.

16. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 3031. On chromos, see Laird, Advertising Progress, 7691. On premiums, see Bullock, "History of the Chain Grocery Store," 42; and Roy J. Bullock, "A History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878," Harvard Business Review 12 (1933), 60. Essay by Louise Slater, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, May 22, 1877, binder 8B, HFF.

17. The story about Hartford's actions cannot be verified, but it appeared in a hometown newspaper, Orange Chronicle, March 16, 1878, six and a half years after the event; see also J. C. Furnas, "Mr. George & Mr. John," Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, December 31, 1938, 53. A&P's official history states that the company s.h.i.+pped large donations of food to Chicago. The advertis.e.m.e.nts using Grand Duke Alexis appeared in the Chicago Tribune on December 3 and 24, 1871, and on other dates.

18. On store locations, see Bullock, "History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878," 59; Boston Daily Globe, January 9, 1875; Hartford Courant, May 6, 1875.

19. Orange Journal, July 8 and November 4, 1876. A quiet Election Day was so unusual that when the 1879 munic.i.p.al election transpired without incident, The Orange Chronicle, March 15, 1879, found the lack of disorder worthy of comment.

20. Orange Journal, November 27, 1876, February 8 and 15, 1879; Orange Chronicle, February 9 and 16, 1878, February 15, 1879. Estimate of number of hat workers is from Orange Chronicle, September 14, 1878, in an article reprinted from New York Daily Graphic, September 6, 1878.

21. This strange sequence of events is recounted in Orange Journal, March 16, 1878, Orange Chronicle, March 16, 1878, and Whittemore, Founders and Builders, 208.

22. Orange Journal, March 16, 1878; Orange Chronicle, March 16, 1878. The number of newspapers, two in English and two in German, is taken from Quarter-Century's Progress of New Jersey's Leading Manufacturing Centres (New York, 1887), 176.

23. Orange Journal, March 30, 1878.

24. Sales and the date of the partners.h.i.+p agreement are recounted in "Gilman's Tea Business," Hartford Daily Courant, October 25, 1901. See also Bullock, "History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878," 60. For details of the altercation, see "Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions," NYT, March 24, 1901. The store count appears in Orange Chronicle, March 16, 1878. Hartford v. Bridgeport Trust Company, 143 F. 558 (U.S. Cir. C., D. Ct., February 12, 1906); Matter of Estate of George F. Gilman, Deceased, 80 N.Y.S. 1122, February 1903.

4: THE GROCER.

1. Joshua Hartford, George L. and John A. Hartford's paternal grandfather, died in 1877. Louis Ludlum, suffering from consumption and Bright's disease, died in the house on May 25, 1878, a few weeks after George H. became mayor. Orange Journal, June 1, 1878. Martha Hartford pa.s.sed away the following November 2 at age seventy-nine. "On Sat.u.r.day she was unusually bright and cheerful, and was about the House" before suddenly dying, the Orange Journal reported, November 9, 1878. Information on domestic servants and on John Clews is from U.S. Census Bureau, 1880 Census, Orange, Ess.e.x, New Jersey, roll T9_780, image 104.3000. Anderson gives Clews's birth year as 1857, in which case his age in 1880 would have been twenty-two or twenty-three.

2. The story about George L. stoking the boiler appears in Merle Crowell, "You Don't Have to Be Brilliant," American Magazine, February 1931, 21; this version, however, has George L. beginning his career at the company in 1877, when he would have been only eleven or twelve years old. The story about his work at the Newark store is in Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., You ... and Your Company, 9. According to that source, the Newark job was George L.'s first position with A&P, but it seems unlikely that a fourteen-year-old would have been charged with handling significant sums of money. Yet another tale of the start of George L. Hartford's career, reported in J. C. Furnas, "Mr. George & Mr. John," Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, December 31, 1938, has the fourteen-year-old "counting and checking cash receipts from all stores"; Furnas does not consider the implausibility of such a young man counting receipts from nearly a hundred stores. George L.'s record at St. Benedict's was confirmed in personal communication from Father Augustine Curley, August 19, 2009.

3. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 10; "A Fine Store Room," Summit County (Ohio) Beacon, April 7, 1880. The paper termed the interior of Great Atlantic & Pacific's new store in Akron as "the finest in the city so far as ceiling and wall decorations are concerned."

4. The 188284 ledger for the store in Port Chester, New York, is item 291, HFF.

5. A&P stores could be found in such out-of-the-way locations as Jeffersonville, Indiana, and Oswego, New York. A full listing of locations, including street addresses, appears on the back of the trade card. On George L.'s role, see Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 31.

6. The company may also have had modest sales of spices in its first two decades. Spices were never mentioned in advertis.e.m.e.nts; the only reference to a spice business is in an August 1866 tax record showing George F. Gilman as a "Grinder of Coffee and Spices" at 45 Vesey Street. Records of the Internal Revenue Service, RG 58, ser. M603, roll 58, frame 6209, NARA-NY. In 1870, the duty on tea was cut from twenty-five cents per pound to fifteen cents, on coffee from five cents a pound to three cents. Two years later, customs duties on coffee and tea were cut to zero; see Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies, 173, 183, and Taussig, Tariff History, 18588. The value of tea imports in 1870 averaged twenty-nine cents per pound, and the twenty-five-cent tariff brought the import price to fifty-four cents; the 1870 tariff reduction effectively reduced the price at dockside to forty-four cents, and the 1872 import price, tariff free, was thirty-seven cents. The import value of coffee was ten cents per pound in 1870, so the dockside price including the tariff fell from fifteen cents to thirteen cents. Coffee imports in 1871, just after the first round of tariff cuts, were 27 percent higher than in any previous year; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract 1878 (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1878), 129; Statistical Abstract, 1891 (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1891), 202203. Gross import figures in U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 901902, are different, but demand and price trends are similar. Company sales figure is from Bullock, "History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878," 61. On the new roasting process, see Boston Daily Globe, February 9, 1885.

7. Other tea companies also added new products around this time; see Hall, "Barney Builds a Business."

8. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 3233. The wartime sugar tariff, enacted in 1864, was five cents per pound, nearly 50 percent of the average import price; it fell to two cents in the 1880s; Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies, 129; Taussig, Tariff History, 285; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 331, 901902. U.S. government policy in this period focused on extracting more value from sorghum, a drought-tolerant gra.s.s, rich in sucrose, which was grown across the Midwest. Sorghum was used mainly for animal feed, but the government supported a major effort to make white sugar from it. The leader of this effort was Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who was later known for his role in winning enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. See Oscar E. Anderson, Health of a Nation, 2729, 3266.

9. Port Chester ledger, HFF.

10. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 29, 38. Bullock, "History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878," 62, dates the sale of baking powder to 1890, but advertis.e.m.e.nts and trade cards show it was sold much earlier.

11. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry, Foods and Food Adulterants, Part 5: Baking Powders (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1889), 56266.

12. Ibid., 588; Law, "Origins of State Pure Food Regulation," 1117. Several A&P trade cards bore the Doremus endors.e.m.e.nt, which was dated July 7, 1888.

13. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 25; Smith, Robert Gair, 73.

14. AG, February 15, 1870, carried an early advertis.e.m.e.nt for "Metropolitan Paper-Bag Manufactory, Robert Gair Manufacturer and Printer of Paper and Cotton Bags and Jobber of Paper and Twine, 143 Reade St New York." See also Smith, Robert Gair, 42, 6466, and Wilbert Henry Ruenheck, "Business History of the Robert Gair Company, 1864 to 1927" (Ph.D. diss.), 917.

15. Hunt, Fruits and Vegetables, 9, 35, 43; U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry, Foods and Food Adulterants, Part 8: Canned Vegetables (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1893), 1020; Brown and Philips, "Craft Labor and Mechanization in Nineteenth-Century American Canning," 746; Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 37.

16. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table, 34.

17. Avis H. Anderson, A&P, 1516, 74; Atlanta Const.i.tution, October 15, 1882; Summit County (Ohio) Beacon, January 3, 1883.

18. Furnas, "Mr. George & Mr. John," 54; "Red Circle and Gold Leaf," Time, November 13, 1950; John A. Hartford to Arthur Buysee, March 26, 1937, file 157, HFF.

19. Orange Chronicle, March 1, 8, and 15, 1890; "Divided on Whisky," NYT, June 12, 1890; "Sold Out the Ticket," NYT, November 11, 1890.

5: THE DEATH OF GEORGE F. GILMAN.

1. George F. Gilman v. Anna K. Gilman, 52 Maine 165, 176 (1863).

2. On Nathaniel Gilman's death and burial, see "Deaths," JOC, December 28, 1859; "Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions," NYT, March 24, 1901; "Will of Nathaniel Gilman," NYT, April 19, 1860; "For the New Surrogate, the Interminable Case of Nathaniel Gilman," NYT, December 31, 1887. Joanna's court case is George F. Gilman v. Joanna B. Gilman, 53 Maine 184, 193 (1865). Anna Gilman seems to have been obsessed by the belief that she and her mother were being treated unfairly and continued legal actions for many years.

3. "Long Fight Presaged over Gilman Millions."

4. "George Francis Gilman Dead," NYT, March 4, 1901; "Gilman's Place of Residence a Big Issue," NYT, March 13, 1901; "Black Rock Mansion Seized," New-York Tribune, March 23, 1901; "Gilman's Idiosyncrasies," Hartford Courant, October 28, 1901; "The House That Premiums Built Will Fall," Bridgeport Post, November 22, 1926; Mary K. Witkowski, Bridgeport at Work (Charleston, S.C., 2002), 83; "Gilman Horses Sold," New-York Tribune, April 17, 1901.

5. "Gilman Chattels at Auction," New-York Tribune, May 16, 1901; "Frazier Gilman's Pet.i.tion," NYT, April 10, 1901.

6. "Mrs. Hall At Last Tells Her Secret," NYT, April 11, 1901.

7. "Gilman's Tea Business," Hartford Courant, October 25, 1901; Hartford v. Bridgeport Trust Company, 143 F. 558; Norton v. Hartford, 113 F. 1023 (1902).

8. According to "Gilman Heirs Fight New Claim," Evening World, June 6, 1901, the lawyer representing Gilman's heirs a.s.serted in court that "there was nothing in the books to show that Hartford had a dollar's interest, and he appeared as a salaried official or employee." "Accuses Gilman Partner," NYT, June 7, 1901; "The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company Certificate of Incorporation," HFF. Hartford's status as a Home Insurance director is confirmed in that company's advertis.e.m.e.nt in NYT, July 11, 1900, and his role at Second National Bank of Orange in NYT, January 10, 1901. Pierson, History of the Oranges to 1921, has an undated photograph of George H. after page 270.

9. "No Tangible a.s.sets," Hartford Courant, March 26, 1901; Bridgeport Trust Company, Administrator, Appeal from Probate, 77 Conn. 657 (1902).

10. In re Administrators of the Goods, 82 A.D. 186 (1902); "Certificate of Amendment of Charter and Increase of Capital Stock," October 20, 1902, HFF; Hall v. Bridgeport Trust, 122 F. 163 (1903); Hall v. Gilman, 79 N.Y.S. 303 (1902); "Gilman Estate Settled," New-York Tribune, July 1, 1903; In re Administrators of the Goods, 92 A.D. 462 (1904); "Ends Claim on Riches," NYT, January 9, 1904.

11. AG, August 12, 1903. The October 1902 amended certificate of incorporation lists Geo. L. Hartford as president, not George H. Hartford; it is unclear whether this was an error.

6: GEARING FOR BATTLE.

1. Financial information was included in George H. Hartford's court filings in his request for an injunction against the Gilman estate, Hartford v. Bridgeport Trust Company, 143 F. 558, and was reported in "Gilman's Tea Business," Hartford Courant, October 25, 1901, and "Legal Notes," NYT, April 18, 1903; David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (New York, 2006), 587.

2. On Goldberg, Bowen, see AG, January 3, 1900, 10. The motto belonged to American Grocer and appeared just below the publication's name.

3. On bargaining and the social tensions involved in grocery shopping, see Tracey Deutsch, Building a Housewife's Paradise, 1422. On incorrect measures, see AG, October 26, 1910, 11. The advice on barrels appeared in AG, July 15, 1903, 8; Bacon, Beauty for Ashes, 75; Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1908, 2629. When the Connecticut legislature appropriated $2,500 for special tests of food purity, state officials found that 254 of 848 samples were not as claimed; AG, July 22, 1896. On similar tests in Minnesota, see AG, October 17, 1906, 10. On the hazards of cans, see AG, February 18, 1903, 11.

4. AG, September 16, 1896, 9; October 27, 1897, 7; December 1, 1897, 8.

5. Barger, Distribution's Place, 148.

6. Bullock, "History of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company Since 1878," 6162, estimates that Great Atlantic & Pacific had approximately 150 stores in 1890 and reached 200 only in 1901. On competing chains, see Bullock, "History of the Chain Grocery Store" (Ph.D. diss.), 5153, 6061, 7072; Hall, "Barney Builds a Business," 306, 310; AG, July 7, 1897, 7; July 15, 1908, 14; and July 26, 1905, 6.

7. The new Tunison Grocery Company in East Orange, New Jersey, for example, billed itself as a "low price store" at its opening in 1898. AG, January 26, 1898, 10; March 29, 1905, 5; June 17, 1903, 10; and November 25, 1908, 8. The Art Deco logo appears on premium coupons dated 1903 in HFF; the globe logo in New Orleans Daily Picayune, January 15, 1901, 1; the one-line logo in Was.h.i.+ngton Evening Star, January 12, 1906, 10.

8. AG, April 1, 1903, 15.

9. The claim to being a "direct importer" was made frequently in Great Atlantic & Pacific's advertising; see, for example, the advertis.e.m.e.nt reprinted in AG, September 16, 1896, 9. The leading coffee importers are listed in AG, January 12, 1898, 22; and January 18, 1905, 26. AG, November 10, 1909, 23, reports Great Atlantic & Pacific receiving relatively modest consignments of coffee aboard two steams.h.i.+ps arriving from Santos, Brazil. On the battle between the coffee and the sugar interests, see "The Sugar-Coffee Fight," NYT, October 6, 1898, and AG, October 14, 1896; December 23, 1896; January 20, 1897; and January 3, 1900.