Shopkeeper Capitalism - National Party Campaign Poster 1949

 National Party Election Campaign Poster 1949

 

They won the election, thanks perhaps to the friendly shopkeeper vote. The same rhetoric was abroad in the UK, a young Margaret Thatcher earning her stripes in her father's corner shop so that later in her career she could barrack the British public in the 1980s with her vision of shopkeeper capitalism and misguidedly apply her corner shop principles to government.

 

Others were more ambivalent about the shopkeeper's role in the community as this postcard from the early 1900s suggests:

 

 

The Grocer

 

You pose for a grocer so swell,

But we're on to you full well;

Your sugar's sand, and second-hand

Is all the stuff you sell.