So I was wondering that in the early decades of the 20th century when automobiles were becoming extremely popular and things like the Ford Model T were creating waves, they were displacing a pretty old and established industry, right?
Horses and carriages had been around for centuries and had a lot of professions attached to them - like coach makers, repairers, horse equipment manufacturers, stablehands and grooms, horse doctors etc. And all of this was becoming obsolete within a few decades.
So what was the reaction to this change? Was there anger, or bitterness? Was there unemployment? Or because of the gradual nature of the change, was it smooth?
After WW1 General Robert E. Wood became an executive at the mail order catalog Montgomery Ward. As an executive he believed that the development of the Model T would change the landscape of American retail. He thought people in rural areas would begin to travel to urban areas to shop instead of by catalog. He thought that the future of Montgomery Ward should be in retail department stores. The CEO of Montgomery Ward strongly disagreed and eventually fired Wood. Wood took his idea to another mail order catalog Sears. Sears implemented Ward's idea and started to build department stores. At the same time there was an entrepreneur named James Cash Penny who was already implementing the same concept himself. By the time Montgomery Ward realized their mistake it was too late. They were eventually surpassed by Sears and JC Penney and they never recovered.