Word: patman
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...last week gave a practical demonstration of trade-union trading. A. & P. signed A. F. of L. contracts covering its Washington and Chicago stores, prepared to follow suit elsewhere. A. F. of L.'s part of the bargain: to oppose Representative Wright Patman's pending bill to tax big A. & P. and many a lesser store chain out of existence...
Colorado's chain-store tax decision is of national importance because awaiting the new Congress is Representative Wright Patman's bill admittedly designed to tax interstate chains out of existence. Proposed at the last session but not voted on, the Patman bill would tax stores on a graduated scale to a maximum of $1,000 times the number of stores times the number of States. For the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.'s 11,752 stores this tax would be $458,328,000, more than half A. & P.'s 1937 gross sales. Melville Shoe Corp...
Time was when a proposal like that would only have made the chains laugh. But Wright Patman has already put over the Robinson-Patman Act limiting rebate and other chain-store practices. And the steady increase in State chain-store taxes has assumed the shape of a national trend. Two months ago, therefore, A. & P., bull's-eye of Wright Patman's attack, broke its 79-year policy of silence on "public and private questions" with a "Statement of Public Policy" advertised in 1,300 newspapers over the signatures of Brothers George L. and John A. Hartford...
Having made such points as these the chains claim that the real reason behind Wright Patman's proposal is the bitter hatred which chain-store efficiency breeds in competitive wholesalers and independents. This efficiency rests upon two prime pegs - ability to buy in huge quantities and elimination of numerous wholesale and other middleman functions which add markups to food costs. Such benefits can be obtained by independents through use of supermarkets or of voluntary chains...
...only string to the chains' bow. A. & P. pays an average of $30 a week to managers and clerks, compared to the Department of Labor's figure of $22 for all retail stores. In their Public Statement in September the Brothers Hartford declared that passage of the Patman bill would put 1,000,000 men out of work. Meanwhile, with little fanfare, A. & P. agreed to place all its outside printing contracts in union shops. Promptly the A. F. of L. announced that it was against chain-store taxes...