Overview

"In popular stereotypes, local grocers were avuncular men who spent their days in pickle-barrel conversations and checkers games; they were backward small-town merchants resistant to modernizing impulses. Cornering the Market challenges these conventions to demonstrate that nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century grocers were important but unsung innovators of business models and retail technologies that fostered the rise of contemporary retailing. Small grocery owners revolutionized business practices from the bottom by becoming the first retailers to own and operate cash registers, develop new distribution paths, and engage in transforming the grocery trade from local enterprises to a nationwide industry. Drawing on storekeepers' diaries, business ledgers and documents, and the letters of merchants, wholesalers, traveling men, and consumers, Susan V. Spellman details the remarkable achievements of American small businessmen, and their major contributions to the making of ""modern"" enterprise in the United States. The development of mass production, distribution, and marketing, the growth of regional and national markets, and the introduction of new organizational and business methods fundamentally changed the structures of American capitalism. Within the walls of their stores, proprietors confronted these changes by crafting solutions centered on notions of efficiency, scale, and price control. Without abandoning local ties, they turned social concepts of community into commercial profitability. It was a powerful combination that businesses from chain stores to Walmart continue to exploit today."

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9780199384273

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Reviews

[Spellman] provides readers with a fascinating description of the role of independent grocers in spurring innovation within the retail function in the 19th century Highly recommended. --CHOICE Like the inviting stores it describes, Susan Spellman's Cornering the Market captures the imagination. In marvelous detail, she recounts the entrepreneurs who started small grocery shops and the range of companies--Quaker Oats, National Biscuit, American Tobacco, National Cash Register--that tried to sell them products, technology, and ideas. It is a well-crafted story of enterprise, culture, and capitalism. --Walter A. Friedman, author of Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America and Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters This book fills in gaps in historical knowledge about the history of grocery stores, and also challenges readers to rethink the key tenets in business history. Dr. Spellman shows how small retailers were at the center of the burgeoning American economy. --Tracey Deutsch, author of Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Government, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century Although often viewed as quaint holdovers from a mythic past, local grocery stores are shown in this book to have been key agents of a modernizing impulse in American capitalism from the Civil War era to the New Deal. Rich and entertaining detail abounds in this fine-grained historical analysis framed by empathy rather than disdain for how small businessmen set the stage for the 20th-century growth of chain stores such as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and eventually Walmart. --Shane Hamilton, The York Management School, University of York

[Spellman] provides readers with a fascinating description of the role of independent grocers in spurring innovation within the retail function in the 19th century Highly recommended. --<em>CHOICE</em> Like the inviting stores it describes, Susan Spellman's <em>Cornering the Market</em> captures the imagination. In marvelous detail, she recounts the entrepreneurs who started small grocery shops and the range of companies--Quaker Oats, National Biscuit, American Tobacco, National Cash Register--that tried to sell them products, technology, and ideas. It is a well-crafted story of enterprise, culture, and capitalism. --Walter A. Friedman, author of <em>Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America and Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters</em> This book fills in gaps in historical knowledge about the history of grocery stores, and also challenges readers to rethink the key tenets in business history. Dr. Spellman shows how small retailers were at the center of the burgeoning American economy. --Tracey Deutsch, author of <em>Building a</em> <em>Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Government, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century</em> Although often viewed as quaint holdovers from a mythic past, local grocery stores are shown in this book to have been key agents of a modernizing impulse in American capitalism from the Civil War era to the New Deal. Rich and entertaining detail abounds in this fine-grained historical analysis framed by empathy rather than disdain for how small businessmen set the stage for the 20th-century growth of chain stores such as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and eventually Walmart. --Shane Hamilton, The York Management School, University of York

[Spellman] provides readers with a fascinating description of the role of independent grocers in spurring innovation within the retail function in the 19th century Highly recommended. --CHOICE Like the inviting stores it describes, Susan Spellman's Cornering the Market captures the imagination. In marvelous detail, she recounts the entrepreneurs who started small grocery shops and the range of companies--Quaker Oats, National Biscuit, American Tobacco, National Cash Register--that tried to sell them products, technology, and ideas. It is a well-crafted story of enterprise, culture, and capitalism. --Walter A. Friedman, author of Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America and Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters This book fills in gaps in historical knowledge about the history of grocery stores, and also challenges readers to rethink the key tenets in business history. Dr. Spellman shows how small retailers were at the center of the burgeoning American economy. --Tracey Deutsch, author of Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Government, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century Although often viewed as quaint holdovers from a mythic past, local grocery stores are shown in this book to have been key agents of a modernizing impulse in American capitalism from the Civil War era to the New Deal. Rich and entertaining detail abounds in this fine-grained historical analysis framed by empathy rather than disdain for how small businessmen set the stage for the 20th-century growth of chain stores such as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and eventually Walmart. --Shane Hamilton, The York Management School, University of York

Like the inviting stores it describes, Susan Spellman's Cornering the Market captures the imagination. In marvelous detail, she recounts the entrepreneurs who started small grocery shops and the range of companies--Quaker Oats, National Biscuit, American Tobacco, National Cash Register--that tried to sell them products, technology, and ideas. It is a well-crafted story of enterprise, culture, and capitalism. --Walter A. Friedman, author of Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America and Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters This book fills in gaps in historical knowledge about the history of grocery stores, and also challenges readers to rethink the key tenets in business history. Dr. Spellman shows how small retailers were at the center of the burgeoning American economy. --Tracey Deutsch, author of Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Government, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century Although often viewed as quaint holdovers from a mythic past, local grocery stores are shown in this book to have been key agents of a modernizing impulse in American capitalism from the Civil War era to the New Deal. Rich and entertaining detail abounds in this fine-grained historical analysis framed by empathy rather than disdain for how small businessmen set the stage for the 20th-century growth of chain stores such as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and eventually Walmart. --Shane Hamilton, The York Management School, University of York

[Spellman] provides readers with a fascinating description of the role of independent grocers in spurring innovation within the retail function in the 19th century...Highly recommended. --CHOICE Like the inviting stores it describes, Susan Spellman's Cornering the Market captures the imagination. In marvelous detail, she recounts the entrepreneurs who started small grocery shops and the range of companies--Quaker Oats, National Biscuit, American Tobacco, National Cash Register--that tried to sell them products, technology, and ideas. It is a well-crafted story of enterprise, culture, and capitalism. --Walter A. Friedman, author of Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America and Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters This book fills in gaps in historical knowledge about the history of grocery stores, and also challenges readers to rethink the key tenets in business history. Dr. Spellman shows how small retailers were at the center of the burgeoning American economy. --Tracey Deutsch, author of Building a Housewife's Paradise: Gender, Government, and American Grocery Stores in the Twentieth Century Although often viewed as quaint holdovers from a mythic past, local grocery stores are shown in this book to have been key agents of a modernizing impulse in American capitalism from the Civil War era to the New Deal. Rich and entertaining detail abounds in this fine-grained historical analysis framed by empathy rather than disdain for how small businessmen set the stage for the 20th-century growth of chain stores such as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company and eventually Walmart. --Shane Hamilton, The York Management School, University of York

Author Information

Susan V. Spellman is Associate Professor of History at Miami University. Born and raised in Ohio, she spent several years working in the retail grocery trade as a cashier, produce clerk, stocker, and bagger before pursuing academics. Her work has been published in Enterprise & Society and the Journal of Popular Culture.

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