USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 54
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venture in Providence; unfortunately for him a more pretentious restaurant promoted by New York capital was opened within a few days almost directly across the street. The New York restaurant was one of a chain which eventually included every large city in the United States and many smaller cities; it survived in Providence, although the Boston experiment was closed for want of patronage.
The immensity of the chain store organization is scarcely realized unless one travels about and finds in almost every city he visits store after store similar in name and in the type of merchandise carried to certain stores in his home city, wares and prices being practically identical. He may eat in a restaurant exactly duplicating the restaurant at home in menu, prices, decorations, furniture, service, dishes and waiters or waitresses, save for faces, and these because of uniform dress tend to lose individuality. His hotel may be one of a chain reproducing similar service in almost every detail except the name of the local newspaper delivered under the door of his room early in the morning with the compliments of the man- agement. He may replace almost any article of wearing apparel by an exact duplicate in size, material and price in a store bearing the same name as the store at home. If he settles down for continued residence he may find the same line of stores purveying food sold in packages identical in detail with those at home. The theatres have the same names from city to city, and in the movies and the talkies the programs are almost identical, first showings being simultaneous in many cities. Radio entertainment is similar because of national broadcasting, except possibly for the voice of the announcer from the local station. In the little city of Springfield, Kentucky, distinguished only because the county courthouse on the main street contains, among other records, the bond filed by Thomas Lincoln when he married Nancy Hanks, a visitor found nothing in stores, on streets or in hotel different from the things in Rhode Island until he saw a long row of buggies drawn up near a church on Sunday while the owners were within. Even the buggy was being replaced by the automobile; the visitor was told that the buggy line was only half as long and the automobile line was twice as long as either had been little more than two years before. The chains include hotels, theatres, res- taurants, shoe, clothing, hardware, jewelry, grocery, tobacco, candy, drug, hat, haberdashery, automobile supply and radio supply stores, and possibly and probably others ; some chains are national, others sectional or local. The chain, unless it is a completely unified corporation, as many are, under a centralized administration and control, may consist of a number of enterprises using cooperation at a highly developed stage in buying and merchandising. In the thoroughly organized chains, the corporation controls the entire output of factories pro- ducing the goods offered for sale, if indeed it does not own and operate the factories as sub- sidiaries of the major enterprise. The tendency in chain store operation lies in the direction of control or ownership, though trade names and labels may be retained on goods that are popular or have established reputation. In buying other goods than those made by or for the chain corporation, the latter with its immense facilities for converting or selling vast quan- tities has an advantage over the owner of a single store, large or small. In the operation of the chain system the wholesaler, jobber and other middlemen are excluded; the chain has buying capacity that prompts dealing direct with the factory owner or other producers.
Rhode Island in 1930 in relation to these merchandising problems arising from the devel- opment of chain stores is little different from other parts of the United States. A prominent wholesale grocery house organized its own chain of retail stores some years ago, and within five years joined in merging them with another system. Two of the largest jewelry factories in Rhode Island manufacture articles sold exclusively in chain stores. Another Rhode Island manufacturer of a nationally advertised commodity finds his largest customer a corporation operating a chain of stores covering the country. In groceries the chain stores at first were limited to the selling of staple lines of goods which were not subject to deterioration by hold-
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ing in stock; eggs, milk, meat, fish, fruit and fresh vegetables have been added in the devel- opment of the chain stores. The chain stores as a rule sell only for spot cash, and thus avoid the extension of credit and accumulation of non-collectable accounts which have ruined many retail dealers. The keen competition to which they have subjected other retail merchants has suggested appeals to the General Assembly for legislation regulative of practices and imposing special taxes. Among other advantages accruing to chain stores are the operation of general average laws, which tend in a broad field to relieve and offset the effect of disturbing condi- tions in a particular place or section. Few chain stores, as an instance, carry insurance on the stock in trade or the building occupied. Assuming general average laws in operation, the number of chain stores destroyed by fire in any year would equal, with scattering of risks, only the number on which an insurance company based its estimate in computing premium charges. The chain store company, experiencing only average losses, earns by not insuring, the normal profit accruing to the insurance company ; or by setting aside the normal insurance premiums in its own treasury, the company can pay its own losses from its own insurance reserve fund and realize a profit. The largest profits accrue, however, from vast buying power and all the accompanying advantages thereof, and vast selling power in a field so broad that local or sectional market variations are easily overcome.
The chain store in the grocery and market trade has solved problems in transportation and distribution as part of its work of supplying scattered stores with merchandise. The corpor- ation maintains storage warehouses at central locations and plans rail shipments to these in carload lots to reduce freight charges to minima. From the warehouses distribution to stores is made in trucks on requisitions of the managers in charge. Bread, of which vast quantities are sold, is baked in centrally located bakeries and distributed to local stores by trucks travel- ing on established routes. Store managers are supplied with price lists weekly, and prices are uniform in the chain stores within areas. Stores are inspected frequently by traveling district supervisors, and stock is checked and accounts are audited at regular intervals, and sometimes without notice, the latter to assure consistent management at all times. To facilitate inspec- tion and other checking the interior arrangement of chain stores conforms to general plans for displaying goods, location of shelves and goods on shelves, counters, scales, coffee grinder, cash register, refrigerator, etc., to the extent that a picture of one serves as a satisfactory pic- ture of every other one in the chain, and a manager or clerk may be transferred from one to another without the embarrassment of "learning the stock." If he knews where an article of furniture or a commodity for sale is kept in one, he can go to the same place in another and find the same thing there. The chain store, as a rule, does not deliver goods for customers, and it does not maintain telephone service to accommodate them in placing orders. In spite of ignoring these conveniences and refusing the book account credit, which is offered freely by many other proprietors, the chain store thrives on a cash and carry basis.
COOPERATIVE ENTERPRISES -- Cooperative stores, conducted primarily for the resale to members of cooperative societies of goods purchased in wholesale quantities, with prices lower than those prevailing in retail trade or with rebate payments of earnings have been successful on a small scale, or when conducted for groups consisting of employes of large corporations or of others having a positive common interest otherwise. An attempt to establish a monster cooperative association, with operations based upon the issue of trading stamps or premium checks with purchases, brought rival associations into the field and developed a competition which destroyed the possibility of advantage. The General Assembly was appealed to, and in 1899* enacted a statute which forbade the giving of trading stamps or premium checks. An arrest was made for violation of the statute, and the case was carried to the Supreme Court,
*Chapter 652, Public Laws, 1899.
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which held that the statute was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amend- ment to the Constitution of the United States, that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process of law," and article I, section 10, of the Constitution of Rhode Island, which protects "life, liberty and property." The court declared that "it is within the constitutional rights of an individual to sell his goods and as an inducement to people to trade with him to give to a purchaser directly or through a third party some other designated article of value as a premium."; The General Assembly subsequently enacted a statute declaring the trading stamp or premium plan of promoting sales as of the nature of lotteries if the premium offered were an "indefinite or undescribed article." Thereafter trading stamps and premium coupons were issued with redemption value stated, but the busi- ness had been curtailed and was abandoned by most merchants, because of the demonstration of futility when no one had advantage.
COAL TRADE-Coal was imported from England so early as 1819, and from Nova Scotia in 1831. Five years later, in 1836, coal was "discovered" under Providence, and mining operations were planned until borings disclosed that the deposit was not thick enough to repay the investment. Graphite and shale deposits, both resembling coal, have been uncovered in several parts of Rhode Island; geological formations indicate that coal beds underly consid- erable areas. Coal has been mined in Cranston and Portsmouth. Rhode Island coal burns and emits heat from combustion, but it does not ignite so readily as most commercial anthra- cite, and has not sold well in competition with other coal because of the special attention required for successful use. One of the earliest merchants who undertook a regular trade in coal began his business by selling the cargo of a small schooner in 1843. The coal trade was stimulated by the extension of manufacturing and the building of steam plants to develop power. Coal came into common use as a domestic fuel because of advantages over wood for keeping fires without constant attention. The coal brought to Providence in 1856 amounted to almost 200,000 tons ; in 1870 the trade had grown to 500,000 tons, and in 1878 it approached 1,000,000 tons. Not all the coal landed at the head of Narragansett Bay from a large fleet of carrying vessels was used in the city; the waters of the bay had been chosen as the natural southern gateway to New England, and coal was shipped from tidewater on the railways con- verging at Providence. As part of the development, the Wilkesbarre pier was built from the East Providence shore opposite Fort Hill, and connected by spur track with the railroads leading toward Boston and Worcester. At the pier the coal was hoisted from the holds of vessels into pockets, and from the pockets poured through chutes into railway gondolas stand- ing on the tracks beneath the pockets. The pockets were destroyed by fire in 1930, and replaced by modern equipment. Two-thirds of the coal unloaded at Providence in 1878 was for transportation elsewhere; five-eighths of the coal burned in Rhode Island at that time was consumed in steam power plants. The earliest carriers were sailing vessels of small tonnage; as the trade developed, large schooners, some with six masts, were built for the coal traffic. Fleets of barges, some converted hulks of old sailing vessels, and others con- structed for carrying coal, were also employed, being towed by powerful steam tugboats. Eventually large cargo vessels driven by steam entered the trade. An estimate placed the average consumption of coal for domestic heating at one ton per person annually.
In addition, Rhode Island factories used immense quantities of coal for power. The earliest manufacture of illuminating gas was by distilling coal; and the production of elec- tricity by transforming steam power into current required coal for making steam. The amount of coal consumed annually by public service corporations is large, in spite of changes in the process of manufacturing gas, economy in making electricity, and the distribution of hydro-
*State vs. Dalton, 22 R. I. 77.
#Chapter 847, Public Laws, 1901; Chapter 401, General Laws, 1923.
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electric power brought to Rhode Island from generating plants in other states. The substitu- tion of electric current for steam power plants in factories resulted in economy in the con- sumption of bituminous coal. In the domestic field of house heating, however, Rhode Island- ers have only recently begun the substitution of central heating plants for separate family furnaces, the change as yet being incidental to the introduction of serviced apartments. The volume of coal, principally anthracite, used as house fuel continued to increase steadily with growth of population. The delivery from water front coal pockets to homes was by carts drawn by horses. The pride of coal merchants was displayed in the use of teams of matched horses in beauty rivalling teams drawing brewery wagons.
The domestic coal trade attained almost the apex of prosperity at the turn of the century. The strike in the anthracite coal fields in 1902, while not disastrous to the Rhode Island trade in house fuel, was embarrassing because of higher prices for domestic fuel which persisted after the strike had been settled, because of economy in the use of anthracite coal learned by some only under the stress of strike conditions, and because of the introduction of substitutes for coal and a receptiveness for such substitutes on the part of many who had felt the coal shortage in the winter of 1902-1903. A second strike in the anthracite field, higher prices for anthracite coal in the sizes preferred by consumers, enforced restriction of the use of anthracite coal during the World War, and the introduction and improvement of devices for using crude petroleum as house fuel have contributed to restrict continued growth of the trade in anthra- cite. Prices have attained a level which permits the importation of Welsh coal for sale at a profit. Other changes affecting the trade have been the transportation of more coal from Pennsylvania fields by all-rail routes direct from mine to pocket, thus reducing the volume brought by water into Narragansett Bay; the location of coal yards with reference to railroad rather than tidewater ; the substitution of automobile trucks for horse-drawn carts in house delivery. The coal horse departed with the fire horse and the brewery horse. The decrease in the number of schooners and barges engaged in the coal carrying trade is offset by the large carrying capacity of the steam vessels in use; the decrease in water borne tonnage is balanced by increase in all-rail carriage. The coal trade is mighty in its proportions in 1930, the factors most effective in restricting it being hydro-electric power and the use of petroleum as fuel. The coal brought to Narragansett Bay by water in 1925 weighed 768,000 tons.
PETROLEUM-As Narragansett Bay was the central distributing port for the coal trade of southern New England, it is now the largest oil port in New England, the volume brought in by water routes reaching 175,000,000 gallons annually. The larger American companies have obtained wharf sites and docking rights on both sides of the Providence River, in East Prov- idence and in Providence above Field's Point, and tanks are conspicuous in size and number. One company has built a refining plant on a broad strip of land reaching across East Provi- dence from tidewater almost to the border. In consequence of the oil development, East Providence has been the fastest growing town in Rhode Island recently. Petroleum is brought to Rhode Island directly from Texan and Mexican ports in great steel ships, and the methods of pumping from the hold of the vessel to the tanks ashore include the most modern devices. Some of the oil is distributed over the New England area in oil tank railway cars, which are loaded from the shore tanks. Oil and gasoline are shipped by water in gasoline-driven tank boats to other Rhode Island ports. Allotments are distributed by fleets of tank trucks, some of which deliver crude oil for use as domestic fuel, and more carry gasoline to the filling sta- tion trade.
The filling station is a twentieth century institution; there were none in the nineteenth century. The few automobiles operated by gasoline engines before 1901 were supplied with fuel by garages, a very few of which had replaced public livery stables. The latter passed
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with the horse and carriage, and the replacement of most animal-drawn vehicles by motor- ized wagons and carriages. The filling station became almost a public necessity, and the development kept pace with the increase in the number of automobiles. The volume of the trade is indicated by the rental and tax values of the property taken for filling stations, the investment in tanks and other equipment, and the money spent to make the stations attractive architecturally and in setting. Filling stations occupy prominent corners in cities and towns and stretch in endless lines along the state highways. The state tax on gasoline sold for use in motor vehicles yields an annual revenue which is an important source of money for build- ing new roads and maintaining highways already constructed.
Besides unrefined oil for fuel, and gasoline for internal combustion engines, the oil com- panies sell lubricating oils and greases, kerosene, naphtha, benzine, and other petroleum prod- ucts, the by-products including a long list of commodities and compounds rivalling the coal tar series. The extent of the petroleum trade in Rhode Island more than compensates for the suggestion of loss in the coal trade. As a matter of fact, one of the large carriers in either line may have the cargo capacity of up to 100 of the small sailing vessels which formerly trav- eled in and out of Narragansett Bay in fleets. Besides that, the large steel ship travels on a schedule almost as regular as that of a well-conducted railroad, whereas the sailing vessel was the toy of wind and current. The ship, deep laden with full tanks, arrives in the morning, is unloaded quickly by the great pumper lines extending out to the ends of wharves, and is away again early in the evening with tanks filled with water ballast. At the loading end the facili- ties for filling tanks are equally efficient, and the great vessel swings between ports like a pen- dulum, steadily providing a connecting link between discharging pipe lines in the Far South and receiving pipe lines on Narragansett Bay, Thus also is the distribution of petroleum arranged in Rhode Island; the shore tanks are temporary reservoirs rather than storage places. Oil and gasoline move out in an almost unbroken stream through daylight hours as one vehicle replaces another under the discharging pipes. Great underground tanks are filled from the tank trucks; thence the measuring pump supplies the automobile tank. The chain organization prevails in the filling station business to the extent that many stations are owned or controlled by corporations selling one company products. Other stations, catering to a variety of preferences, carry several lines in stock, the colors of pumps, different for easy dis- tinction of the specific gasoline, adding picturesqueness to surroundings. Color is an element in chain store organization which is emphasized, and the oil companies have adopted the same principle.
RUM AND PROHIBITION-That Roger Williams would write the "rule of reason" into even a prohibitory statute is proved by his plea for the privilege of selling to Indians small quantities of ardent spirits for use as medicine. Not all by any means, but considerable, nev- ertheless, of the wealth accumulated in Rhode Island in colonial days accrued from the busi- ness of distilling molasses into rum. The manufacture of rum declined with the restriction and suppression of the slave traffic, with which it had been associated as one process in the triangular trade with the three corners resting in Rhode Island, Africa and the West Indies. John Brown's development of India Point in Providence included a distillery. The vessels engaged in the profitable trade with the Far East carried distilled spirits as exports, and included them in incoming cargoes. Asa Blanchard owned the last Rhode Island distillery of the old régime, and closed it in 1874; it was located at Traverse and India streets in Provi- dence. Rhode Island distilleries had produced rum and gin. Extravagant relations of the extent of the distilling industry in Rhode Island picture the shores of Narragansett Bay as lined with distilleries, neglecting the facts of investment in buildings, equipment, stock in process, and credit, all of which would tend to restrict the number of plants operated on a
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commercial basis. Home brewed beer was as common in Rhode Island as might be expected among people whose ancestors were of European extraction. The rise of a brewing industry apart from the home was indicated by the leasing of the cellar of the old State House at New- port for trial of a project to manufacture bottled beer for export. Holmes & Company of Providence and W. Hill & Son of Newport brewed and sold malt liquors before 1850.
The first of the modern breweries in Rhode Island was built on the site on Jackson Street, Providence, formerly occupied by the Holmes brewery. Others were erected, and by 1900 Rhode Island was served by the product of half a dozen large breweries, additional to the malt liquors brought in from other states. The brewing industry suffered a reverse for a short time during the period of constitutional prohibition in Rhode Island, 1886 to 1889, but recov- ered promptly, even before the repeal of the amendment. The breweries during the interval had manufactured and sold ales with reduced alcoholic content. Much the same expedient was resorted to after the inauguration in 1920 of national prohibition under the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. But the brewing industry has declined in the ten years of prohibition so much that plants once held intact for resumption have been dismantled or converted for other purposes.
Related to the brewing industries were hundreds of retail shops for dispensing the product, operating under license laws, all of which were closed as liquor saloons in 1920. Before that the public saloon had been banished from many towns by adverse referenda, and even in cities public opinion rigidly adverse to abuses in the traffic in alcoholic beverages had excluded saloons from the principal business streets. Along with other agencies formulating opposition to public drinking, the public schools for more than a quarter of a century had given instruction in physiology and hygiene with emphasis upon the effect of alcoholic bever- ages and narcotic drugs upon the human system.
In colonial Rhode Island the prototype of the licensed saloon was the public tavern, cater- ing to needs for food and drink. The liquor saloon emerged from the tavern as a separate institution, offering food free and, as a rule, only as an inducement to drink. Suppression of "free lunches" in saloons was one of the measures used to restrict intemperance even before constitutional prohibition. The restaurant, offering food without alcoholic liquor, emerged from the tavern through the restrictive operation of liquor license laws. While most hotels and a few restaurants operated under tavern licenses and continued to serve both food and liquor as licensed retailers, most of the restaurants in Rhode Island by 1900 served no liquor even with meals.
RESTAURANTS -- Long before prohibition became constitutional in 1920 the restaurant and the liquor saloon had become distinct and separate institutions. The oyster and fish restau- rants, famous in their day and well-known the country over because of the tales told by travel- ers who had eaten oysters or clams in Rhode Island, have disappeared almost without notice, for most of them were hidden away on narrow streets known only to the elect. The devel- opment of the restaurants of Rhode Island has been most marked during the past thirty years, and coincides with changes in the economic life of the state. The concentration of mercan- tile, financial, manufacturing and other establishments in city centres brings to the down- town sections thousands daily; to these the new restaurants and cafeterias cater. The self- service cafeteria particularly adapts itself to the feeding of large numbers in the shortest possible time, and hurry is the characteristic of city life even in the midday lunch period. Besides the food shops operating exclusively as restaurants and cafeterias, drug stores, depart- ment stores, groceries and bakeries operate "lunch counters," to which thousands resort for food and refreshment. The present has been characterized as the sandwich era in America,
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