The Anthropocene Reviewed

In 1920, Green’s great-grandfather Roy worked at a grocery store in Tennessee. It was an old-fashioned store where the grocer would personally gather the items for the shopper. He hoped the job would help him make it out of poverty, but the advent of self-service grocery stores, where people could pick out their own items, changed everything.

The self-service revolution in groceries largely started with Clarence Saunders and his store Piggly Wiggly in Memphis. He continued opening new locations, and soon the concept of self-service had spread around the world. Piggly Wiggly cut costs by requiring fewer workers, then it further cut costs by replacing fresh foods with those that would take longer to spoil. And so, self-service grocery stores led directly into processed foods like Cambell Soup and OREO cookies.

Despite his initial success, Saunders expanded too aggressively, and by 1922, he went bankrupt and lost control of the company. Within a year, he had come up with a new concept that in addition to being self-service, would have clerks working in the meat department and the bakery—basically, the modern supermarket. The new owners of Piggly Wiggly tried to stop Saunders’ new store in court, but they failed, and Saunders’s new store went on to succeed as well.

Saunders’ new store eventually had to close during the Depression, and he went broke again. Saunders tried a third time with a new, even more automated research concept that involved self-checkout, but it failed, and he died in a sanitarium. Piggly Wiggly lives on, even to this day, mostly in the South. Food prices are low compared to the average wage but diets are also poorer, with processed food making up a large percentage of people’s diets. Piggy Wiggly reminds Green of how the big get bigger by eating the small, with Piggly Wiggly swallowing local groceries only to get eaten itself. He gives Piggly Wiggly 2½ stars.