Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2024/spring/Section13/George A. Twiddy

Biography

George A. Twiddy was born in the late 19th century, around 1885. In 1939, the time of the interview, he was about 55. At 16 years old in 1900 he started work at C.H. Robinsons Fair Store after school and on weekends, performing menial labor for a salary of $1.50 an hour. His duties included cleaning spittoons and sweeping horse droppings. He did similar work at Sawyer & Jones hardware store and then at Jones Raper & Co., a dry goods and clothing store. In 1907 he became a full-fledged shoe salesman at department store R. J. Mitchell, working there for seven years until he co-founded his own retail business in 1914, which he was still running in 1939 during the interview. The advent of new technologies, such as the automobile, continued to force Twiddy to adapt new business strategies. He purchased his own Model T Ford in 1924, and did not believe in upgrading to a new model until absolutely necessary. Another societal change that affected his business was the sales tax, which he embraced as a way to discreetly mark up prices. The emergence of chain stores posed a challenge to his business, and forced him to focus on interpersonal relationships with his customer base and devise new marketing strategies to stay afloat. Despite his efforts, he struggled with debts and was forced to tighten credit. In the 1930s, he built a large house and offered lodging and breakfast to travelers as an extra revenue source, which he maintained with his wife. Twiddy was involved with his church and community, and had at least one son, who was high-school age at the time of the interview.

Social Context: The Changing Landscape of Retail in the Early-to-mid 1900s

Chain Stores

Chain stores are defined as single organizations operating multiple establishments. While having existed around the world since at least 200 B.C.E, chain stores took off in the United States in 1859 with the founding of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea company (A&P). By the turn of the century, A&P operated around 200 stores. Lured by the possibility of greater profit than a single store could generate, several companies—such as Kroger and J.C. Penney—had followed A&P’s example. These operations capitalized on economies of scale, reducing costs through bulk purchasing and uniform operational practices. These savings created lower retail prices to bolster the chains’ competitive edge in the eyes of consumers. Innovations such as the cash-and-carry model which eliminated purchases on credit and deliveries, or the 5-and-10-cent store sped up the growth of chains even further. At its peak in 1930, A&P operated 15,700 stores, which would fall to around 4,500 after the inception of the supermarket in the early ‘30s. As chain stores became more prevalent, they met resistance from independent retailers and local enterprises that were anxious about the competitive threat they represented. This opposition sometimes led to municipal legislative measures aimed at tempering the expansion of chain stores through taxes and regulatory constraints, but due to their lucrative nature they went relatively unopposed at the legal level. In 1939, chain stores made up only 7% of all stores in the U.S. but over 20% of the sales.

The Sales Tax

Sales taxes are taxes on purchases made by the general consumer. These can include purchases of goods such as electronics or furniture, and purchases of services like home repair or dry cleaning. U.S. States that implement a sales tax define taxable items and impose a tax rate on those items. A general sales tax is a sales tax that applies to all purchases made. The tax paid by a consumer on a specific item is calculated by multiplying the cost of the item and the applicable tax rate. Currently, all U.S. states but five (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon) have a sales tax. The general sales tax was first implemented in the US in response to the economic pressures of the Great Depression. While there are examples of US taxation on sales before this time—such as Pennsylvania’s 1821 mercantile license tax—they were not commonplace and were very limited in scope. Before World War I, only the Philippines and Mexico had systems of general sales taxation. After the war ended in 1918, European countries— for instance Germany in 1918 and France in 1920—adopted their own sales taxes. Several US states, led by Kentucky in 1930, soon followed suit. By the early 1930s, over half of the US states had a general sales tax. A form of national sales tax was posed to Congress in 1932, but was defeated. States’ adoption of the sales tax was often driven by the need for an easily administered and productive source of revenue. Despite sales taxes affecting lower-income individuals more heavily, they were seen as useful tools to fund state functions like education, poverty relief, and infrastructure. The design and application of the sales tax varied widely among states, with some applying the tax only to retail sales and others including a mix of wholesale and retail or covering a broad range of goods and services. In 1933, the state of North Carolina enacted a 3% sales tax on all goods other than meat, bread, and flour. By 1939, most citizens accepted the sales tax as a convenient means of supporting state government through small payments.

Citations

Buehler, Alfred Grether. 1948. Public Finance. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3215016&seq=556.

Lebhar, Godfrey Montague. 1963. Chain Stores in America: 1859-1962. https://ia904709.us.archive.org/26/items/chainstoresiname00lebhrich/chainstoresiname00lebhrich.pdf.

North Carolina General Assembly. 2009. “Overview of NC Sales Tax.” November 3, 2009. Accessed May 6, 2024. https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewDocSiteFile/52650.

US Census Bureau. 2021. “Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1944-45.” Census.Gov. December 16, 2021. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1945/compendia/statab/66ed.html.