For the Love of Murphy's: The Behind-the-Counter Story of a Great American Retailer by Jason Togyer (review)

G. C. Murphy's began its life as one of the most iconic of American businesses—the five-and-dime store. Founded in 1899 in western Pennsylvania, its early stores were located in smaller towns dominated by mining and steel mills, and its success reflects a time when malls were not ubiquitous and rural residents shopped in the downtown area of their hometowns. Murphy's would ultimately expand its empire over the next eight decades, doing battle with wellknown rivals such as Woolworth's, Kresge (and later Kmart), Ames, and McCrory, and while the stores may not have been as universally famous as those of its competitors, they generated a fierce loyalty in the towns they called home. Many a business district in the Appalachians and Midwest depended on its Murphy's store as an anchor, and sales could draw people into town in droves. It was not just the locals who knew about Murphy's, though. The business was on the radar of economists and investors for decades as its novel approaches allowed it to outperform much larger chains financially during the Great Depression and through the 1950s and 1960s. Its success, in some respects, led to its demise, as it ultimately was bought out in a hostile takeover in the 1980s.

As an institution beloved by both small-town residents and big-city investors, Murphy's cut a rather unique figure in the business world, and author Jason Togyer uses archival material and oral histories to document the details of the chain's economic development while also touching on the nostalgic nature of people's memories of the stores. As someone who has fond recollections of the parakeets, toy department, and creaking, old-school wooden floors of the Murphy's in her own town, this reviewer can attest to the hold that the institution has on its former customers. It would be easy for Togyer to let this nostalgia overwhelm the business aspects of the book, but he manages to balance engagingly the factual treatment of the company's development with the happy reminiscences of shoppers. He utilizes sidebars throughout the book to let the excerpted oral histories of employees, executives, and customers retell the Murphy's story in their own words. While the use of oral histories contributes significantly to the economic trajectory he is trying to trace in this volume, it also provides a way for some of the more nostalgic memories to be inserted without derailing the purpose of the study.

Because the corporate archives were essentially dismantled when the company was taken over by Ames and McCrory in the 1980s, Togyer did not have access to the materials usually used to undertake such research, but he used the opportunity to gather widely-dispersed documents and to conduct oral histories with a range of people who had ties to Murphy's. He notes, "Because of space constraints, I could only use a fraction of what I received, but it was all appreciated and enjoyed" (xi). All the papers, photographs, and interviews he gathered were donated to the McKeesport Heritage Center, which operates in the Pennsylvania town where Murphy's was previously headquartered. Togyer also acknowledges that some of his travels and photocopying were funded by the Heritage Center through a grant from the G.C. Murphy's Foundation, but he notes that the foundation never attempted to influence the content of the book. It is obvious from his honest and clear-eyed assessment of the corporation's evolution over the years that he had free rein throughout, both to work with and interview a wide variety of individuals and to make his findings publicly available in an uncensored state.

As someone who loved Murphy's during her early years but was blissfully unaware...