From the Trading Post to Amazon · Episode 6 of 12 · 16 min
When America Almost Outlawed the Chain Store
In 1946 a federal court convicted the world's largest grocer of what was essentially selling food too cheaply. The episode follows A&P's roughly 15,700 cash-and-carry stores and house brands, Clarence Saunders's self-service patent, and the independent merchants' counterattack through chain-store taxes, a proposed federal death-sentence tax, and the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936, whose revival by the FTC in 2024 shows it is no museum piece.
Who's who
- George Huntington HartfordBuilt A&P from a Manhattan shop into a national chain
- John A. HartfordA&P executive who invented the Economy Store; convicted in 1946
- George L. HartfordA&P treasurer convicted in 1946 and fined
- Clarence SaundersFounded Piggly Wiggly and patented self-service
- Frank W. WoolworthBuilt the five-and-dime chain and the Woolworth Building
- Michael J. CullenOpened King Kullen, the first supermarket, in 1930
- Wright PatmanTexas congressman who co-authored the Robinson-Patman Act
- Louis D. BrandeisJustice whose 1933 dissent warned of the curse of bigness
Where it happens
- Memphis, Tennessee+1 more episodeWhere Piggly Wiggly opened in 1916
- Jamaica, Queens, New YorkSite of the first supermarket, King Kullen
- Danville, IllinoisWhere the A&P antitrust case was tried
Timeline
- September 1916Clarence Saunders opens the first Piggly Wiggly
- 1930A&P peaks at roughly 15,700 stores; King Kullen opens August 4
- June 19, 1936Robinson-Patman Act signed
- September 21, 1946Judge Lindley convicts A&P and its executives
- 1954Consent settlement leaves A&P intact
- December 12, 2024FTC files its first Robinson-Patman suit in decades
Still debated
Economists mostly read A&P's low prices as scale and efficiency, while the court's findings of discriminatory supplier preferences support a squeeze reading. Whether Robinson-Patman helped small merchants is also disputed, since it blocked independents' buying cooperatives.