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Show "The Romance of American Industry" By J. C. Penney Chain stores have reached theii present magnitude because their founders achieved success belli rid the counters of small individual stores and applied their earnings to expansion rather than to por- sonal income, J. C. Penney, found-. found-. er and head of the J. C. Pennej systi.-m of 1500 stores, said last night in a radio address broadcast over thirty-five stations in a na-, na-, tional hook-up of the Columbia Broadcasting system. Mr. Penney spoke on "The Ro-. mance of American Industry." It was broadcast over Columbia's short vave Station W2XE, which is picked pick-ed up in many foreign countries. His talk follows: The history of the chain store industry in the United States is the history of individual merchants who first attained success behind the counters of small, individual stores and then employed this success suc-cess to expand into constantly enlarging en-larging fields While the records of these individuals indi-viduals is one of pioneering in a new era of retailing, the chain store method of operation, in itself, it-self, is not a new one In some form or another, it has existed for three centuries and was first put into operation in central Europe. On the North American continent, contin-ent, the original Hudson's Bay Company was the first of the chain type of merchandising organization to make its appearance. To-day, chain store units are to be found in every community in the entire country, serving nearly every requirement of their communities as they relate to the necessities of life Grouped as an industry, the chain stores represent the largest singlu type of business we have. Gross sales of all chain stores operating in the United States for 1929 were over nine billions of dollars. dol-lars. Expenditures of 28 leading chain store systems for advertising used to convey their sales message to the buying public during 1929 were approximately twenty millions of dollars. The thirteen leading grocery chain store systems operated oper-ated 32,811 stores and other smaller chain systems in the food business brought this total up to a figure in excess of 59,000. The 11 leading notion chains, including in-cluding the 5 and 10 cent stores operated 4,069 store units; apparel stores totaled 2,271; jthoe stores, 618; leading chain restaurants, 412, and others, including the leading drug store systems, cigar store chains and others added in excess of 5,600 more. Their growth parallels the rapid expansion which has taken place in the past fifty years in the development de-velopment of community living and any study of tneir progress must take into consideration the increasing increas-ing requirements of the average American community for better service and added facilities fcr meeting the demands of the typical American home. From the intimate viewpoint of the average American family they represent, more completely than do the figures of any other typical industry, in-dustry, a representative American achievement, brought about by representative rep-resentative American conditions. A significant aspect of the growth of the chain store systems is found in the fact that their present financial fin-ancial structures are in nearly every ev-ery case the result of accumulated store earnings rather than the investment in-vestment of large amounts of outside out-side capital. The development of nation-wide organizations having low mark-up as a fundamental policy, has brought about a new relationship between management and employee and there are outstanding chain store systems in which the indi-vidual indi-vidual store managers are, in an economic sense, part owners of, or partners in the stores which the operate. Where this policy prevails, the individual store manager is in reality, a store owner enjoying the added economic advantage of financial fin-ancial protection afforded by a pooling of the assets of hundreds of other store managers. The organization which I represent, repre-sent, started in a town of 1000 people, peo-ple, in what was, in 1902, an isolates mining community in the far West. Today it serves the French Canadian Can-adian lumbermen who come into Fort Kent, Maine with their families fam-ilies to buy; it .serves the Mexicans Mexi-cans who come to our Southwest border towns; it outfits the schoo. girls of the central west and the families of the men who work in the Eastern manufacturing centers. cen-ters. Where, a few years ago, the demands de-mands and needs of this far flung range of population bore but little resemblance to each other, today they are the same. Radios, improved im-proved mail service, expanding newspaper circulation, improved magazines, greater facilities for individual in-dividual travel, have brought all communities into common touch with the rest of the country. California Cal-ifornia fruit is served on every table in the country. Todays style in New York is worn at to-morrow's tea in Georgia or Idaho and the chain store, with its massed facilities facili-ties for purchasing and for distributing dis-tributing its merchandise, is ready to serve its individual managers in accordance with their conception of the needs of their community. In its relation to the national pay roll, to the income which the farmer farm-er derives from his crops, to the speed with which the retail dollar dol-lar is converted into the producer's dollar, the nine billion dollar business busi-ness of the chain store industry represents a stabilizing influence which is not exceeded by any other oth-er industry The service of th? chain store.-to store.-to the individual in the present economic condition of the country has been demonstrated by the rapidity ra-pidity with which they adjusted retail re-tail prices to reduced costs of pro- B- 11 1 M-nri hit duction and passed the saving on to the consumer. In their ability to do this, as in their ability to expand their facilities facil-ities for individual service, they represent a practical demonstration demonstra-tion of economic flexibility which may well become a guide for all retail procedure. |