Landscapes and Sweatshops

by Cliopatria

Sears and K-Mart are merging.

As this Washington Post article (registration required) notes, “Both companies have deep roots in American corporate history.” Like many American historians, I think of Sears in near-iconic terms. It’s catalogue interlaced the American plains with the rest of the nation as rapidly as rail line could be built.

Memory reinforces history. Sears was an important source of my family's clothes, my brother’s tools, and even my toys growing up.

I don’t think of K-Mart that way, but I should. It’s innovations also mark our history and my life. As the same article notes, K-Mart pioneered the big box stores that mark American suburbs, exurbs, and even downtowns now. In architecture it was a big step toward what I think of as disposable stores: buildings built with a limited life span that minimize the corporation’s investment in a community.

By the time I hit college, K-Mart and some of its imitators had become important sources of the cheap stuff that I bought. Years later, when I bought my first house, I got the new frig—the first large appliance I ever bought-- from K-Mart.

Wal-Mart has taken K-Mart’s innovation to a whole new level, of course. Cheap stuff, disposable buildings. Disposable communities.

Disposable lives, too. Another Post article today discusses the way new WTO rules are going to help China suck jobs away from its Asian neighbors. The"how" of this is simple. China’s government promises to help Wal-Mart and other international beneficiaries sweat the last possible penny out of people who makes pennies.

Of course the new Sear’s Holding Corp. (a grey name, isn’t it, for a marriage of convenience) will also benefit from the cheaper prices, though they won’t be as cheap as Wal-Mart’s market share gets them. What they probably can’t match are either Wal-Mart’s efficiencies of organization or Target’s marketing panache.

I hope they make it, but doubt if they will. Or as my wife, who’s a far better economic historian than I am, put it when I emailed her the news,:

“Wow--I’m not sure which the merger will screw up worse: Sears or K-Mart. I wouldn’t invest in either one, that’s for sure.”

Postscript: Just back from shopping. Has anyone out there succeeded in buying Christmas lights not made in China lately?

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More Comments:

Oscar Chamberlain - 11/18/2004

I hate to cause problems for generalizations, but my town has no Starbucks; it has a Wal-Mart; it's building a super Wal-Mart; and it went for Kerry.

Of course we're rural, and so lots of liberals think we must be red, so they pass over us.

Brandon Scott Watson - 11/18/2004

I'm not much of a commenter, but I couldn't help but respond! I graduated high school in a town of about 25000 in New Mexico, Bush country without a doubt, with a Wal-mart and no Starbucks (although I think they just recently acquired a Starbucks). And people never went to Wal-mart just to shop. Well, that's probably an exaggeration; but shopping was rarely the only thing you did. Very often you would run into someone (often several people) you knew, or someone who happened to know someone you knew, so people would go to shop and visit people. And when family and friends would visit from out of town, it was not uncommon, if someone needed to buy something, for the whole group to go off to Wal-mart and browse for a while. High school and junior high school students who were bored in the afternoon would even sometimes go to Wal-mart to see if they could bump into anyone they knew, sometimes before, sometimes after the mall. I suspect this is fairly common in smaller towns (I know that in some places Target substitutes for Wal-mart).

Ralph E. Luker - 11/18/2004

Nathanael, The theory sounds right to me. I could drive by a dozen Starbucks before I reached the nearest Wal Mart. In fact, it is remarkably inconvenient for us to try to get to one of the big box stores that are in the Atlanta perimeters. Big boxes and city life don't seem to mix very readily.

Nathanael D. Robinson - 11/17/2004

AMong the thousands of polls conducted before the election was one that said that Kerry supporters tend to live within two miles of a Starbucks, Bush supporters two miles of a Wal Mart. What I thought was odd was the choice of businesses to represent different types of communities. Neither Starbucks nor Wal Mart is a boon to the local economy. However, Starbucks is a better meeting place than Wal Mart--even as they are adding restaurant services, no one goes to Wal Mart except to shop. However, it ends up being a lifeline for people who have located far from the cities--something urban-like, but not really urban. Personally, two miles from me is nothing--Wal Mart is closer that Starbucks, but two cafes are much closer than either one.