Horseless Horses: Car Dealing and the Survival of Retail Bargaining

News reports suggest that in the near future, electronic chips on every item in a store will allow consumers to be charged for purchases automatically by simply walking out through the door.1 No checkout clerks will ask the shoppers if they found everything they were looking for; no checkout robots will ask if the customers would prefer to hear their oddly inflected voices speak in English or Spanish; nothing tangible will mark the exchange of value. This invisible transaction will be the latest evolutionary step away from the complex face-to-face negotiation between buyer and seller that once marked almost every retail transaction, one that uniquely survives in the purchase of an automobile. Would-be buyers who walk into automobile dealerships in the 21st century enter a time warp. They are transported back to the early 19th century , to an era before goods were sold to all shoppers at the same posted price and before dissatisfied customers could return their purchases. They are confronted by sales personnel who are masters of the ancient arts of flattery, high pressure, misdirection, misrepresentation, and patience. They are willing to sit for hours haggling over the cost of everything from the basic car itself, to the moonroof, the floor mats, the interest rate on the car loan, and the trade-in value of the owner’s current vehicle—to name just a few of the price points open to negotiation. It makes no difference if the customer is interested in a new or a used car; the process is roughly the same. In the worst (and fairly common) case, the shopper is met at the curb by a “greeter” who tries to determine if he or she is a “looker” or a serious buyer. Buyers are then turned over to a more experienced salesman who finds a car the buyer wants and opens a period of painful and protracted price negotiation, retreating often to an office in the back to check offers and counteroffers with his manager. Eventually the sales manager himself will appear to continue the dickering over price, and, if the customer is unyielding, the sales manager is sometimes replaced by his manager. In the meantime, the buyer has had to work with the dealer’s used-car appraiser to determine the trade-in value of his or her current car. Once the price of the new and used cars are agreed to, the customer is turned over one more time to the business manager who not only negotiates finance and insurance charges, but also tries to sell dealer-installed add-ons such as fabric protection and rust proofing.2 As bad as this system may seem, historically things were even worse. Prior to 1958, the buyer often had no idea what the dealer\u27s standard asking price was, because there was no established way to represent the price of cars on the lot. The requirement that all new cars carry a sticker listing the manufacturer\u27s suggested retail price (MSRP) created a common starting point for price negotiations, but no more than that. The advent of the Internet has armed some buyers with more accurate information about dealer costs, but that has only made the negotiations fiercer, forcing dealers to give better prices to informed buyers and then trying to make up the loss of profit by keeping up the costs to others. With the isolated exception of General Motors Saturn division, dealers adjust the prices of their vehicles to the local market, charging additional markup on highly sought after cars and cutting the price of slow-selling ones. And even on a Saturn lot, where sticker prices are stuck to, negotiation can take place on ancillary products and services, and will always occur on the trade-in allowance for the customer\u27s current car

Do-It-Yourself: Constructing, Repairing and Maintaining Domestic Masculinity

In the 1860s when Harriet Robinson annually set aside a full month for the spring cleaning of her Malden, Massachusetts home, she had the occasional assistance of hired help, but none from her husband William. Over the years, as the Robinsons improved their house by installing weather stripping, repapering rooms, refinishing furniture, and putting in a new mantle, Harriet\u27s biographer Claudia Bushman notes that neither she nor William lifted a finger toward household maintenance. 1 Some eighty years later, immediately after World War II, when Eve and Sam Goldenberg moved into a somewhat decrepit apartment in the Bronx, Sam patched the holes in the wall himself and they both worked to scrub away the residual odor of people who don\u27t care. 2 After a few years in the Bronx, the Goldenbergs (now the Gordons) moved out to a new subdivision on Long Island where Sam built a brick patio and the surrounding fence, installed a new front door, and drew up plans to build a dormer window on the front facade. Real estate agents for the development would drive prospective buyers to the Gordons\u27 house so they could admire Sam\u27s handiwork and, in the words of the family chronicler Donald Katz, see what a homeowner could do with old-fashioned, all American know-how ... through the agency of his own hands.

Black Men and Businessmen: The Growing Awareness of a Social Responsibility

A study of changes in American business attitudes concerning the recruitment of blacks since World War II relates black employment problems to the businessman\u27s concept of his role in society.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1368/thumbnail.jp

Lang and Lee: Two Views of the Great Depression

During the 1930s, America was the subject of American art. The European expressionism that had influenced so many artists through the 1920s was unceremoniously abandoned in favor of domestic realism. Creative people in all the arts adopted the theme. Virgil Thomson\u27s music and Martha Graham\u27s dance joined the novels of John Dos Passos and the plays of Thornton Wilder in an across-the-board celebration of America, past and present. Domestic realism, as an artistic style, could take two distinct forms. · On the one hand there was the documentary style that sought to illustrate the country\u27s troubles as a first step toward solving them. On the other hand there was the American Scene, a somewhat amorphous concept that stressed the strength and traditions of the country in a consciously nationalistic way

Horse Trading in the Age of Cars

The trading, selling, and buying of personal transport has changed little over the past one hundred years. Whether horse trading in the early twentieth century or car buying today, haggling over prices has been the common practice of buyers and sellers alike. Horse Trading in the Age of Cars offers a fascinating study of the process of buying an automobile in a historical and gendered context. Steven M. Gelber convincingly demonstrates that the combative and frequently dishonest culture of the showroom floor is a historical artifact whose origins lie in the history of horse trading. Bartering and bargaining were the norm in this predominantly male transaction, with both buyers and sellers staking their reputations and pride on their ability to negotiate the better deal. Gelber comments on this point-of-sale behavior and what it reveals about American men. Gelber's highly readable and lively prose makes clear how this unique economic ritual survived into the industrial twentieth century, in the process adding a colorful and interesting chapter to the history of the automobile

New Deal Art: California

Traditionally, the years of the New Deal projects have been treated as a part of the Depression experience with an emphasis on their economic and social dimensions. Until recently, sporadic interest in the art of the period has usually focused on individual artists, not general movements in the art of the time. This has been particularly true in the western states. The purpose of the New Deal Art: California exhibition was to create an overview of the New Deal art projects by bringing together examples of art from the federal art programs in California. New Deal Art: California came about as the result of a chance remark made, by Dr. Francis V. O\u27Connor, Art Historical Consultant, on his first trip to the de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum in 1971. The original exploratory research he did revealed a wealth of information about California\u27s contribution to the Works Progress Administration\u27s Federal Art Project and the Treasury Programs. Dr. O\u27Connor\u27s initial work helped provide the foundation for two years of subsequent research into the historical and aesthetic climate that gave birth to New ,Deal Art in California. The results of our explorations, in both quantity and quality of resources, has far exceeded our original expectations.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1367/thumbnail.jp

The discovery of potent, selective, and reversible inhibitors of the house dust mite peptidase allergen Der p 1: an innovative approach to the treatment of allergic asthma.

Blocking the bioactivity of allergens is conceptually attractive as a small-molecule therapy for allergic diseases but has not been attempted previously. Group 1 allergens of house dust mites (HDM) are meaningful targets in this quest because they are globally prevalent and clinically important triggers of allergic asthma. Group 1 HDM allergens are cysteine peptidases whose proteolytic activity triggers essential steps in the allergy cascade. Using the HDM allergen Der p 1 as an archetype for structure-based drug discovery, we have identified a series of novel, reversible inhibitors. Potency and selectivity were manipulated by optimizing drug interactions with enzyme binding pockets, while variation of terminal groups conferred the physicochemical and pharmacokinetic attributes required for inhaled delivery. Studies in animals challenged with the gamut of HDM allergens showed an attenuation of allergic responses by targeting just a single component, namely, Der p 1. Our findings suggest that these inhibitors may be used as novel therapies for allergic asthma

Comparative Genomics of Gardnerella vaginalis Strains Reveals Substantial Differences in Metabolic and Virulence Potential

Gardnerella vaginalis is described as a common vaginal bacterial species whose presence correlates strongly with bacterial vaginosis (BV). Here we report the genome sequencing and comparative analyses of three strains of G. vaginalis. Strains 317 (ATCC 14019) and 594 (ATCC 14018) were isolated from the vaginal tracts of women with symptomatic BV, while Strain 409-05 was isolated from a healthy, asymptomatic individual with a Nugent score of 9.Substantial genomic rearrangement and heterogeneity were observed that appeared to have resulted from both mobile elements and substantial lateral gene transfer. These genomic differences translated to differences in metabolic potential. All strains are equipped with significant virulence potential, including genes encoding the previously described vaginolysin, pili for cytoadhesion, EPS biosynthetic genes for biofilm formation, and antimicrobial resistance systems, We also observed systems promoting multi-drug and lantibiotic extrusion. All G. vaginalis strains possess a large number of genes that may enhance their ability to compete with and exclude other vaginal colonists. These include up to six toxin-antitoxin systems and up to nine additional antitoxins lacking cognate toxins, several of which are clustered within each genome. All strains encode bacteriocidal toxins, including two lysozyme-like toxins produced uniquely by strain 409-05. Interestingly, the BV isolates encode numerous proteins not found in strain 409-05 that likely increase their pathogenic potential. These include enzymes enabling mucin degradation, a trait previously described to strongly correlate with BV, although commonly attributed to non-G. vaginalis species.Collectively, our results indicate that all three strains are able to thrive in vaginal environments, and therein the BV isolates are capable of occupying a niche that is unique from 409-05. Each strain has significant virulence potential, although genomic and metabolic differences, such as the ability to degrade mucin, indicate that the detection of G. vaginalis in the vaginal tract provides only partial information on the physiological potential of the organism