Selling Elegant Glassware During the Great Depression: A. H. Heisey & Company and the New Deal

P. Bradley Nutting

Business History Review, 2003, vol. 77, issue 3, 447-478

Abstract: The sale of luxury goods during the 1930s represents an incongruous aspect of American business that has been largely ignored by historians. This essay focuses on the efforts of one manufacturer of high-quality, elegant glassware, A. H. Heisey & Company of Newark, Ohio, to survive the Great Depression. Heisey created successful new sales strategies and product designs to meet the changing tastes of its customers. Although difficult to gauge with precision, Heisey's business also benefited from the overlapping influence of several New Deal measures: the Beer–Wine Revenue Act, the National Recovery Act, and the National Housing Act. Paradoxically, Heisey was most hampered by President Roosevelt's adoption of fiscal restraint in 1937, a policy that the company's Republican executives strongly advocated.

Date: 2003
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