THE TRUTH ABOUT THE A&P
Basil, Amos S.
Truth About the A&P Food Combine Undersells Small Groceries by Undermining Them By AMOS S. BASEL ABOUT THREE MONTHS ago the Great Atlantic and Pacific Company declared war on the Government of...
...When the Government attempted to reply to them, a large number of papers "missed" the story...
...The Truman Administration has been particularly active in its enforcement...
...In a series of full-page ads run in newspapers across the country, in hundreds of thousands of blown-up handbills, in enlarged posters hung in the windows of all its stores, A&P announced its defense of the "people" against their Government...
...It doesn't...
...A&P has retained Johrl T. Cahill, formerly U.S...
...Democracy depends upon the survival of the middle class, the small businessman...
...Once that results, prices inevitably rise...
...acting head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is being given the business by the proStalinists in the organization...
...The first one chosen, an American, is Bernard Parronchi, first cellist of the Boston Symphony...
...The predatory discounts blackjacked from suppliers yielded A&P 22.5 per cent of its profit in 1939, 22.47 in 1940, and 24.59 in 1941...
...Address is One Madison Avenue, New York City * * ? John Chamberlain almost vyent to Newsweek as business editor...
...The courts found that A&P had succeeded in obtaining excessive discounts from its suppliers by the abuse of its huge purchasing power...
...This, of course, precludes operating in small towns and sparsely settled areas...
...In addition to operating (1,000 retail stores, thousands of warehouses and slaughterhouses, A&P is one of tlie largest coffee roasters, one of the biggest AMOS S. BASEL was counsel to Standard Oil minority stockholders in a case concerning the company's German cartel connections before the war...
...Its purpose was to attempt to disburse wealth and power throughout the community, so as to keep a small group from gaining the control of our economic system which inevitably means control of our political system...
...it violates the law...
...In 1946, in a criminal suit instituted in a Federal District Court in Illinois, A&P and many of its officers and directors was convicted of violating the Sherman AntiTrust Act...
...Heard on the Left MEMO TO AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR: On March 31 nominations for the Hall of Fame close...
...He has written extensively on the subject of monopoly, and recently lectured at...
...The case was appealed to the U.S...
...In celebration of Holy Year, the Vatican is selecting from all over the world eight outstanding musicians to perform in Rome...
...Three companies do 100 per cent of the aluminum business, three companies do 86 per cent of the cigarette business...
...The real facts behind this shouting have been very carefully obscured by the A&P ads...
...Congressmen and the Department of Justice have supposedly been deluged with mail...
...A&P does not undersell others only because it is efficient...
...It threatened to boycott these suppliers and place them on individual blacklists or enter into manufacturing or processing businesses itself, in competition with them, if its price demands were not met...
...Circuit Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit...
...It provides lower prices because...
...Wayne Richardson, the AP reporter who covered Ihe shelling of the Flying Cloud in Chinese waters, is the front-runner for the George Polk awaid...
...4 * * Dan Tobin, Teamsters' president, sponsored the successful candidacy of William McFetridge, president of the Building Service Employees International, to the AFL Executive Council...
...e e e THE GOVERNMENT, having proven A&P's guilt in the criminal suit, then turned around and started a civil action to break up the empire so that these abuses could not recur...
...Latest recruit to the Stalinist publishing houses is Olema Publishing Company, Olema, California...
...canners, the second largest baker in the United States...
...Although A&P does only 6 per cent of the total retail food business in the U.S., the figures do not reflect its hold on our total grocery bill...
...He leaves August 19...
...tho Korea vote, for example...
...these added illegal profits make it almost impossible for others to compete...
...17 issue carried a music story about the marriage of Isaac Stern and Nora Kays...
...i? # One of the biggest celebrations in Manhattan will take place next September at the 90th birthday of Abraham Cahan...
...Concentration has not yet reached that degree In the retail chain store field, but it is moving fast In that direction...
...The small town boy becomes a clerk in an industrial bureaucracy rather than a corner grocer...
...According to A&P propaganda, thousands ot people rallied to their support...
...Retailing is only an incidental part of its activities...
...The case is going to be a difficult one to win...
...Nora replies— with the candor so well-known to all her friends: " 'He's always walking in when I least expect him.' " * * * THE HIGHER DIPLOMACY...
...A&P, through its integrated operation, could expand to include these personal services provided by small grocers, if it wanted to...
...To a great extent A&P's low prices are subsidized by the illegal profits that have been squeezed out of the hides of suppliers, who must then perforce raise prices to competitors of A&P in order to survive...
...Next on the list is the Marine Cooks and Stewards' history...
...This widens the spread between what A&P charges and what other retailers are required to charge to make a profit...
...The usual pattern of monopoly is to raise prices and restrict production...
...THE WHIP...
...In the larger towns and cities, A&P has driven countless independent competitors to the wall...
...113 companies own 50 per cent of the entire industrial plant in the U.S...
...The independents exist orfly on, A&P sufferance...
...The attempt to destroy A&P is a heavy blow struck by the Anti-Trust division in his defense...
...Tho latter has boon following the CP line in tho organization dospito his protestations to tho contrary...
...Al the last moment, however, Life agreed that Chamberlain would do <; regular column and the Newsweek deal is off...
...It paid a fine of $175,000 anH did not attempt an appeal to the United States Supreme Court...
...Superficially, it appears as though Anti-Trust has gone haywire...
...this centenary year...
...It was found guilty of operating in restraint of trade and conducting a partial monopoly...
...Noel Field, wfiom the Daily Worker under Arnold Sroog's byline has called an American spy, has been traced to Moscow by our intelligence...
...In those spots its stated aim is to capture at least 20 per cent of the business...
...I. F. Stone tried to prevent Anna Louise Strong from being interviewed by the World-Telegiam because he felt it would be "Just red-baiting...
...In Germany, on the other hand, the concentration of economic power led to fascism...
...This is noted for the record just in case people think that the choice of McFetridger who backed Dewey in the '48 campaign, means a Republican addition to the Council...
...Next edition should contain roll call votes on foreign affairs...
...The court found that the discounts A&P forced on its suppliers, in that way, required suppliers to make their profit out of other customers by charging higher prices which were passed on to A&P competitors...
...we are headed in one of those directions unless something is done to break up the huge industrial oligarchies that we have allowed to grow during the last fifty years...
...Based on these percentages of earnings, A&P cannot be considered to be in the retail food business...
...His stopover photo in Paris shows him holding under his arm a book titled, The God That Failed...
...ff * Credit Business Week and the Chicago Daily News for busting the Defense Department's weird "security" regulations at Stewart-Warner...
...This follows the internal setup now obtaining in A&P, which, for efficiency reasons, is already broken dpwn into seven separate units, each with its own operating head...
...Unless the brakes are applied to A&P and the other huge chains, it is probable that thousands of additional independents will disappear...
...Forty-eight corporations, each capitalized at a billion dollars or more, are richer than many state governments...
...They live because they provide credit, make deliveries, stay open late at night and Sundays...
...At tho NAACP Board mooting Feb- 14, a voto of confidence in Wilkins was carried with three votes against tho NAACP loader, who led tho barring of Communists from the FEPC Mobilization last month...
...Ninety-nine per cent of the stock is in the John Hartford Trust, controlled by two octogenarians, George A. and John L. Hartford, sons of the founder...
...When the profits from all of its * other sources as manufacturer, processor, importer, canner and baker are added, the result is such a huge combination of economic power which can be wielded in so many directions, that it is almost impossible for any independent to compete with it...
...In the U.S...
...it is interesting that the British Socialist Government put an anti-trust law into effect after it came into power...
...This, said the court, was a studied attempt upon the part of A&P to create a two-price level: one for A&P and the second for competitors...
...Local banks, insurance brokers, lawyers, and others who should receive the income an independent would leave in the community, are replaced by huge firms in New York who do the business for the whole chain, leaving only crumbs to the local communities...
...The public, whose interest la being enlisted on the side of the A&P, would be well advised to learn the real facts behind the prosecution, and not be bribed into forcing the "anti-trust lawyers" into selling our democratic birthright for a reduction in the price of eggs...
...Many economists believe that socialism would not have been necessary in Britain if industrial power had been dispersed more widely...
...THESE DISCOUNTS were arranged as concealed kickbacks in the form of advertising, display, bag and label allowances, in an attempt to evade the law...
...Weber and Judge Dolany...
...The Government has picked its toughest case in tackling A&P, because A&P has always appealed to the public on the basis of offering low prices—which it does...
...A&P already has a huge advantage because of its size, and its integrated operatipns...
...A&P's six thousand stores do a gross volume of over two billion dollars a year in limited, concentrated areas...
...of honest men like Andy Biemiller or Jack Javits...
...But vicious price-cutting destroys competition and leads to monopoly...
...If it expands in this direction it will absorb a high additional percentage of the market...
...ti »i» * Serious weakness of Labor's League for Political Education scorecard is that it makes Vito Marcantonio out to be a 100 per cent perfect Congressman — the equal, say...
...After a trial extending over many months, Judge Walter Lindley, a Republican District Court Judge, and a veteran of 23 years on the bench, found A&P guilty beyond a reasonable doubt...
...The goal of the operation is to have stores only in cities where the gross available retail grocery business is $20,000 a week or more...
...THE A&P EMPIRE consists of 14 separate corporations tied together at the top in a holding company...
...These are the facts...
...u o In Philadelphia, recently...
...In some years it has mad* almost as much money out of the Atlantic Commission Corp.—a subsidary it has set up as a wholesale purchasing agent for itself and others—as it does out of retailing...
...The*»"anti-trust lawyers from Washington" were denounced for attempting to destroy "free enterprise," for plotting to raise prices, and for scheming against the virtuous, defenseless A&P...
...those that ran it buried it...
...The opinion was written by Judge Sherman Minton, subsequently elevated to the U.S...
...THOSE WHO ATTACK the welfare state as leading us towards socialism would be much better advised, if they really believed in the free enterprise system, to attack huge concentrations of economic power...
...Attorney for the Southern District of New York*, where the action is pending, to represent them...
...If the Government is successful against A&P, it will no doubt go after the other great retail chain store groups and attempt to force the same pattern upon themThe result of a Government victory will be to restore a great measure of competition in the food industry, and at the same time leave the competing units large enough to enable them to operate efficiently and sell at reasonable prices...
...Princeton University on the subject of antl-trusi laws...
...First book is by Mike Quin called The Big Strike, with a postscript by Harry Bridges and illustrated by Rockwell Kent...
...The Big Four against him are John Hammond, Palmer Weber, Earl Dickerson and Judge Hubert T. Delany...
...The cause of this uproar was an anti-trust suit filed by the Government seeking the destruction of tjjis colossus...
...In recent years the Sherman Anti-Trust Act has been revitalized by use...
...Tho three who voted against (Dickerson was absent) wore Hammond...
...A victory for th Government over A&P would bo a great forwards step in the enforcement of the law, and in halting the rush towards industrial oligarchy and the extinction of small business...
...RAISED-HIGH-BROWS DEPT.: Neusweek's Feb...
...Roy Wilkins...
...For example, ho introduced a resolution (tabled) asking the NAACP to record itself against Judge Medina's contempt citation against the lawyers for the Communists...
...In Its civil action the Government will try to divorce the manufacturing business from the retailing business, by dividing the company Into 7 competing retail chains, each with about 850 retail stores...
...This colossus also saps the economic strength of the smaller communities, by siphoning monies that properly belong there into the pockets of its absentee owners in New York, the Hartfords...
...Stone got her so worried (she submitted to the interview as press agentry for her book) that she typed out her answers...
...In 43 Industries the first four companies account for more than 50 per cent of the total production in their fields...
...Did you notice the photograph on page 14 of the New York Times, February 16, of the new Indian Ambassador to Moscow...
...There isn't a single labor figure in the Hall of Fame...
...Later, he was co-counsol in a consumer suit against the New York Tele* phone Company...
...Editorials have been written condemning the Government's action...
...Supreme Court by President Truman...
...He Is on tho panol of tho American Arbitration Association...
...In many places it does over 50 per cent of the business...
...Since then, lie's spurlos versenkt...
...A&P was prosecuted because it has established a consistent policy of abusing its size and power and so damaging others...
...As of now...
...It is like a pygmy boxing Joe Louis...
...The vice thus created by A&P's integrated operation is what the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was aimed to end...
...The attack upon A&P did not come about because it sells at low prices, as the ads would have you believe...
...Three judges unanimously affirmed the lower court...
...In those years the profits from its retail operations varied from approximately 6 to 11 per cent...
...The millions of dollars being spent in advertising propaganda is aimed at bringing heavy pressure to bear on the Department of Justice, and in that way to try to obtain-a favorable deal...
...in which the following paragraph appeared: "They have by virtue of their different careers led a hectic and unconventional married life" 'We have a marriage between dates,' he explained...
...Truth About the A&P Food Combine Undersells Small Groceries by Undermining Them By AMOS S. BASEL ABOUT THREE MONTHS ago the Great Atlantic and Pacific Company declared war on the Government of the United States...
...The situation became so agitated that the Attorney General himself held a press conference to explain it all...
...It'll be made at the Overseas Press Club dinner March 3. * * * HARRY J. CARMAN, retiring dean of Columbia College, is now under top consideration as Ambassador to Spain...
...Why doesn't the AFL put up the name of Samuel Gompers...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 8
