When Mom and Pops Battled Five and Dimes
During the Great Depression, the rise of chain stores threatened local retailers.Â
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Facing increasing unemployment, falling wages and terrible returns on investments, consumers of all classes sharply cut spending in the early 1930s. Retailers suffered.
Annual sales at department and specialty stores in 1932 had dropped more than 40 percent since 1929. Chain stores, by contrast, experienced much smaller declines, just more than 10 percent since 1929.