Army & Navy: Big Business

Before the war is over, the biggest, widest-spread chain-store business in the world is likely to be run by the U.S. Army. Last year A. & P. grossed $1,378,000,000, Sears, Roebuck grossed $976,000,000. This year the Army’s post exchanges will gross about $350,000,000 (in domestic U.S. alone) and that figure is only a starter.

Next year, with the Army going to double or triple its size, with more & more soldiers going to foreign parts where only PXs (big ones at home bases and small, mobile field exchanges behind battle lines), will be able to supply many soldier wants, that gross is certain to go up & up.

How high it will go not even Brigadier General Joseph Wilson Byron, head of the Army Exchange Service, could accurately guess. But General Byron, a quiet, easygoing West Pointer who left the service to run his family’s leather business after World War I and returned last July, can toy with some intriguing figures.

Assuming that 5,000,000 soldiers each spend $300 a year in the P-X—or 10,000,000 soldiers each spend $150—the Exchange Service will gross $1,500,000,000. Wherever the figure stops, General Byron (salary $8,000 annually) along with his top men and the bosses of its stores (all officers trained for the job, most of whom have had retail sales experience) will face a historic job of merchandising.

The exchanges have a tremendous advantage over private business—no overhead for store premises, plenty of low-cost soldier help, no labor problems, no advertising costs, no taxes. Without headaches of civilian business, profits are easy to figure. The rule is that they must be not less than 5% nor more than 7½%.

All the earnings go back to the enlisted man, part to the camp fund (for recreation, etc.), the rest to regimental, troop and company funds to be spent for dayroom furniture, athletic equipment, parties, etc.

The P-X is most often compared to an oldtime general store, but it is more than that. A typical exchange has a bar serving low alcoholic beer (it may not be intoxicating), juke boxes, a shooting range, a soda fountain where a soldier can buy a lunch topped off by a triple-dip ice-cream soda. Usually there are also a barbershop, cobbler’s shop, a tailor to make alterations in issue clothing for the carefully dressed soldier. Last week the Exchange Service added a new feature: officer’s uniforms that a new second lieutenant can buy within the range of the $150 the Army gives him for his first outfit. Civilian outfitters can conform or be undersold.

When an enlisted man drops in at the P-X he can hang around the place, chew the fat of the post, get a copy of True Romances, watch officer’s and noncoms’ wives come in for meat and groceries, make restrained horseplay with other fellows. There he can buy cigarets, souvenir ash trays, candy, razor blades, gasoline, Sunday uniforms—more than 6,000 items.