"Unliked Taxes"

"Unlike Taxes"

HELP THE FARMER SELL HIS SURPLUS CROP--PEA BEANS 3 Ibs. for 13-c-

In 37,000 chain stores all over the U. S. placards such as this appeared last week. Bean promotion appeared in newspaper advertisements, in radio blurbs, on roadside handbills. Some 200,000 well-drilled chain-store workers urged even illiterate housewives to buy jumbos, red kidneys, yellow eyes, chile or limas. This high pressure was no stunt. It was the latest application of a new economic device notably successful in its 15 previous tests. Its enthusiasts describe it as some-thing to put AAA to shame, for it works on the positive principle of reducing surpluses--not by reducing production but by increasing consumption.

The scheme goes back to 1935 when the California Chain Stores Association hired the big Chicago advertising agency of Lord & Thomas to help it defeat a chain-store tax (TIME, Nov. 9, 1936). Lord & Thomas put young Theodore W. Braun on the job. Ted Braun had made something of a reputation as a marketing counsel in Los Angeles. As general manager of the anti-chain-store-tax campaign, he taught California farmers that the chain stores were their customers and friends, and the tax was defeated. As part of Ted Braun's anti-tax campaign, the National Association of Food Chains, represented by the heads of 16 large companies, sat down in May 1936 with representatives of the National Co-operative Council, an association of 51 agricultural co-operative groups with a membership of 1,500,000 farmers. Out of the meeting grew several policies, one of which was an agreement by the chain stores to stage special sales campaigns whenever the farmers were stuck with a bona fide surplus of any crop.

This had been tried locally by such stores as First National in Massachusetts and Safeway in California. But it had been attempted on a nation-wide scale for the first time only a month before the conference between farmers and chains. California cling peach growers found themselves with a carry over from 1935 of 6,469,000 cases of canned peaches, 72% more than the previous year. With a big 1936 crop impending, it appeared that peach prices might drop to $15 per ton, substantially less than the cost of production. Growers appealed to the chains. Ted Braun and National Association of Food Chains' Vice President John A. Logan made careful but speedy preparations, and 34,000 chain stores staged a four-week peach ballyhoo. Sales jumped 171% over the same period for the year before, the carry over was cut to 1,929,000 cases; the growers got $30 per ton for their 1936 crop. This success was largely responsible for persuading the chains to make such campaigns permanent policy.

Next plea came from cattlemen forced because of 1936 drought to sell their beef at any price. The July slaughter was 25% over the previous year and many a rancher faced ruin. But the chains, with the aid of numerous packers, put on sales pressure. Chain-store beef sales jumped 34% in August over August 1935; the price of choice steers rose from $8.58 in June to $10 in September; cattlemen received more August income than the previous five-year average; the Government had to buy only 5,000 head to hold up the market instead of the 2,500,000 it bought in 1934.

The beef campaign was the stiffest crisis the stores had to meet. They did the job by placing advertisements in 8,000 newspapers in every State at a cost of $2,000,000. There were also 33,000,000 handbills, window displays, free recipes, radio programs, much oral promotion by salesmen. Cattlemen bore none of the expense and there was no price fixing.

In many localities the beef campaigns and others which followed had a long-range effect not originally foreseen. In a campaign for lamb, prices continued to rise for six months after the promotion slopped. In pushing grapefruit, one chain company developed so many new customers that its sales rose 1,695% m rural territories. A new market was opened up. One farm woman wrote: "I boiled the thing [grapefruit] for three hours and a half and it was just as tough afterward as when I began."

Campaigns have also been made for turkeys, walnuts, dried fruit, apples, avocados, eggs. In many of them independent stores have also played a part. This year campaigns have already been planned for eggs, rice, potatoes. Because the 1937 bean crop is 23% greater than the 1928-32 norm, chain-store house organs last week sloganed: "Make America bean appreciative." Said Printers' Ink: "These campaigns have demonstrated that farm relief can be practical. . . . Here is a partnership of producers and distributors that has brought producers and consumers closer together, with a taste of prosperity for the farmer, but, unlike taxes, without making the consumer pay. . . ."

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