SOMETIMES WHEN I am deer hunting and futilely following a track, I come across the remains of an old stone wall at the top of one of Vermont’s small mountains, a mile or more from the nearest road or cleared ground. It is always a melancholy sort of moment. Somebody, you think, once farmed this ground. You try to imagine the work that went into cutting down the trees (no chain saws back then), digging and burning the stumps, and plowing the earth, which was full of stones. The stones weren’t good for anything so they went into this wall–makes your back ache to think about it–and here they still sit, while the land has gone back to second-growth hardwoods. Vermont was 90 percent cleared and 10 percent forested a century ago–percentages that are now almost exactly reversed.
But what, you wonder, happened to the family that once tried to farm this place?
Gone on, certainly, to other things. Moved to town. Left the state. Went to college. Got work in the city. The great-grandchildren now live in suburbs where they cut the grass with a lawn tractor bought at the Wal-Mart.
So things change; even in Vermont. Though the National Trust for Historic Preservation doesn’t think this is an especially good idea. Last week, it declared the entire state hallowed ground against the dire and imminent threat posed by…Wal-Mart.
The Arkansas leviathan currently runs four stores in the state–all small by Wal-Mart standards. You could probably cruise every aisle and be done in less than an hour. These stores appeared in the state only in the last decade or so, after stiff resistance from preservationists. Wal-Mart had to agree to operate out of existing shopping centers that had been abandoned by other operators. The one in Bennington where I sometimes shop (great prices on rifle ammunition) had been home to a K-Mart, I believe, though it may have been an Ames. One of the merchants, at any rate, that choked on Wal-Mart’s dust.
Now Wal-Mart wants to expand some of the existing operations and open some new stores, the precise number being still unclear. What is certain is that Wal-Mart is in for a fight.
The shape of the fight is familiar enough. What gladiators in the Coliseum were for the Romans and the Super Bowl is to most of America . . . that is what a zoning, land use, development dispute is to modern Vermonters. If a ski resort should announce plans to add another lift or–perish the thought–some new condominiums to its operation, the forces of preservation can be counted on to come howling out of the woods and muster on the town green, armed with petitions, ready to march and hold hearings…endless hearings. These hearings are a form of trench warfare in the battle for Vermont.
But they are only one tactic, and the forces of resistance use others to stall and confound their enemies. When a business in the town to the south of me wanted to build a new office building off the main highway (a three-lane–only Vermont has three-lane highways), the resistance claimed that the site was on a “bear corridor.” My own experience with bears in Vermont has been that they pretty much go where they want and aren’t going to throw up their paws and quit because an office building is between where they are and where they want to get. Still . . . studies were done, accommodations were made, money was paid. The office building went up and, to the relief of everyone, there are still bears in the woods.
While bears are good, arrowheads are better. A private school near me had picked a site for a new building but was forced to find another location because that one contained evidence that Indians had once used it. The same tactic stalled a commercial project for months, though the arrowhead shard in question could not be produced when a judge asked to see it.
These are tough battles, and the forces of resistance sometimes fight dirty. No doubt they feel they have to. The stakes, after all, are high and the enemy is ruthless.
Which, in the case of Wal-Mart, is certainly true. The company is famously hard-nosed with vendors and employees. You don’t sell at everyday low prices by being nice.
So it promises to be a good, spirited gutfight, and it ought to make for some lively conversation on those dull winter nights between the election and town meeting day.
Question is: Whose side to take?
It is easy to brush off the resistance to Wal-Mart as, among other things, elitist. Certainly there is some of that. People who have made–or inherited–a bundle and come to Vermont to build a 12,000-square-foot house and enjoy the simple life in the country don’t want big-box stores cluttering up the countryside. If that means that the people who mow the grass and plow the driveway have to pay higher prices for engine oil and tires…well, life is hard.
The most beguiling anti-Wal-Mart argument is that the big stores will chase the little ones off. The mom and pops will not be able to compete with those famous everyday low prices, and Vermont’s picturesque little towns will soon be hollow at the core. There isn’t much disputing this. The place where I used to buy my ammunition went out of business.
The kind of commerce that Wal-Mart represents will change the state, no getting around that. The small business will go the way of the small farm. To which market purists will say, “Get used to it,” and cite Joseph Schumpeter’s famous formulation.
But calling something “creative destruction” doesn’t necessarily sanction it. After all, it does sort of depend on what’s being destroyed and what is being created, doesn’t it? And just because some of the anti-Wal-Mart people are fools, that doesn’t necessarily mean that their cause is foolish. If Wal-Mart (and the mall culture, in general) represents the future, then the past is looking pretty good.
Resistance to the forces of the market no doubt is quixotic. Trying to hold back Wal-Mart is probably an exercise in pure futility. But to my way of thinking, that’s the best argument for making the fight. The Green Mountain Boys started a revolution a few miles from where I live, but they, admittedly, were going up against a mere king. The world’s greatest retailer–and richest corporation–will be a lot tougher.
So as Ethan Allen famously said, “Hey, bring it on.”
Geoffrey Norman is a writer in Vermont.
