Too Long; Didn't Read
Living in 1917, it would be hard to predict that a consumer revolution was about take place in the United States. Though the Model T was approaching its tenth birthday, there were a mere <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/summary95/mv200.pdf" target="_blank">4.7 million automobiles on the streets</a>. Americans <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/the-life-of-american-workers-in-1915.htm" target="_blank">walked everywhere</a>, including multiple weekly trips to local food merchants — grocers, butchers, fruit and seafood markets. There, they payed outrageous prices to sustain a diet based largely on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/america-in-1915/462360/" target="_blank">cold cereal and lard</a>. As Marc Levinson writes in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Great-Struggle-Small-Business-America/dp/0809051435" target="_blank">The Great A&P</a>, the typical working class family devoted a third of its income to groceries, the average farm family even more.