WHEN A New Jersey clothing chain opened a new branch at Union Township one day this month, 20,000 first-day shoppers from a 30-mile radius jammed highway 22 for four solid miles. Main reason for the stampede: the store opened on a Sunday, thus permitting entire families to do their shopping together. Such booming Sabbath business has become a nationwide phenomenon—and one of the hottest controversies in U.S. retailing.
From New Orleans' Schwegmann supermarket (whose bar dispenses brand-name liquor for 30¢ a shot on Sunday) to Los Angeles' $6,000,000-a-year, 24-hour-a-day Ranch Market, grocery stores now find that Sunday is the third biggest day of the week (after Saturday and Friday). As supermarket stocks have expanded in postwar years to include goods ranging from shovels to shotgun shells, discount houses, clothing stores, furniture and appliance dealers have turned to Sunday selling. Many department stores even hold "Sunday special" sales. For auto dealers, Sunday trade often amounts to 50% of total weekly sales. Even in Mormon Salt Lake City and Baptist Atlanta, where the Sabbath is scrupulously observed, real-estate agents say that Sunday is still the heaviest day of the week by far.
In Milwaukee, Seattle and New Orleans, the Sunday boom has spurred vigorous counteroffensives by merchants' associations, which resist Sunday selling as an unfair pressure on the businessman. Church groups have joined in the criticism. Decrying "this insidious and fast-growing practice," Cardinal Spellman last month urged New York's Roman Catholics to "help others who wittingly or unwittingly may be breaking God's Third Commandment," by refusing to do Sunday buying.
The great majority of retailers contend that seven-day selling is indefensible in the face of nationwide pressure for a four-day week. While small businessmen say they are forced to open Sundays to meet low-margin chain-store competition, many chain operators have found that Sunday volume has become too big to jettison. A big Arkansas supermarket operator who returned to the six-day week found that receipts dropped 40%. In Indianapolis, after agreeing to close on Sundays, the Kroger chain was forced to reopen nine of its 16 markets.
Determined attempts by businessmen to keep store doors locked on Sundays have proved ineffectual in most areas. In Los Angeles, where
Sunday shoppers come from towns 50 miles away, more than 95% of auto dealers approached by a trade association agreed recently to observe a six-day week. While some 85% have kept the pledge, five of the city's 31 Buick dealers have already reopened Sundays. Union efforts to give members their traditional day of rest have also boomeranged. Merchants take punitive wage costs in stride while union members vie eagerly for double time Sunday duty.