In Cornering the Market, Susan Spellman offers an engaging corrective to views of American business that too often conflate “big” with “modern.” Spellman deftly refocusses attention on the role of independent grocers in the many developments in transportation, distribution, marketing, and communications that characterized commercial capitalism from the Civil War to the 1930s. Instead of backward-looking, change-resistant dinosaurs, she argues, grocers were often early adopters of new retail technologies and practices. While large firms and, later, chain stores would come to dominate economic histories of the period, small businesses were integral to developing networks of distribution. Key to her approach is her attention to the “real people who built the trade” (11), including not only grocers but also travelling salesmen and wholesalers. Adopting this more personal and individualized approach allows her new insights into the development of credit networks and the adoption of new retailing innovations.

Spellman outlines changes in grocers’ accounting systems in the late nineteenth century, as stores systematized their bookkeeping and carefully tracked expenses and profit margins. She devotes a chapter to the role of the cash register as part of the larger “control revolution” in business (48), showing how even small stores were willing to make the substantial investment in a machine that offered new levels of precision in documenting the flow of goods and cash across the counter. Cash registers promised to eliminate a host of problems for the small shopkeeper, from clerks with sticky fingers to inaccurate entries in store ledgers. Spellman argues that early adopters of cash registers were able to influence the design of the machines: complaints from users of National Cash Registers led to suggestions like the modification of keyboard layouts and the inclusion of a “blank” key that would allow more flexibility in recording credit sales. Even as retailing became more systematized, it was still anchored in personal relationships. Spellman shows the complex negotiation involved between travelling grocery salesmen like Samuel Iseman, who used his personal and family ties to evaluate potential rural dealers for the hams he sold. Iseman's local connections provided information that went beyond the ratings supplied by national credit agencies. And while other sectors of the economy phased out drummers and wholesalers, Spellman notes that within the largely decentralized grocery trade, these methods of distribution persisted well into the twentieth century, keeping goods and information flowing between commercial centers and hinterlands (107).

Spellman recasts the battle between chain stores and independent grocers, emphasizing the long tradition of experimentation on the part of small stores. Innovations like self-service, standard pricing, and vertical integration were all pioneered by independents first (175). By the 1920s and 1930s, the very categories of “chain” and “independent” were in flux, as some individual grocers banded together in voluntary cooperatives with centralized buying power in an attempt to gain the advantages of the chain system while maintaining local control of individual operations. Efforts at chain regulation through taxation proved ineffective, and successful public relations campaigns by A & P and other national chains changed public perception. Much to the chagrin of independents, the chain store went from being characterized as predatory and un-American to being celebrated as the paragon of modern retailing.

To interweave the stories of individual grocers with the larger structural changes that were going on in the marketplace, Spellman draws on trade papers, diaries, advertisements, store records and other archival sources with a keen eye for illuminating examples. She concedes that most of the subjects of her study were white men, as sources reflecting the experiences of ethnic, African American and women grocers are particularly scarce. Even given this limitation, it would have been nice to see more consideration of how discussions of small business fit into contemporary debates about gender and labour. Subscribers to journals like American Grocer envisioned themselves as ambitious and modern men, using their intellect and business acumen to succeed in the trade. How did their defense of retail independence (in contrast to chain stores), for example, relate to ideas of masculinity and work? How did the cash register go from being associated with male, independent proprietors to the domain of female cashiers? There is likewise little discussion here of consumer experiences, or of the interaction between male grocers and their largely female customer base. In sum, this work will be of great interest to scholars of business and the history of capitalism. It treats small business with respect and sympathy, and encourages us to rethink the place of the small grocer in the larger story of American enterprise.