The Romance of a Great Store

reached a population of 650,000 persons, and was adding to that number at the rate of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand annually. Its real and personal property was assess

he first two of these communities one could take certain of the horse railroads. John Stephenson had perfected his horse-car and these modern equipages-how quaint and old-fashioned they would seem today-were already plying in Second, Third, Sixth, Eighth and

a goodly portion of Tenth Avenue, or else the trains of the New York & Harlem, or the New York & New Haven, from their separate terminals back of the City Hall and Canal Street up through Fourth Avenue, the tunnel under Yorkville Hill and thence across the Harlem Plain to the river of the same name. A litt

which were the two Episcopalian churches in Broadway-Trinity and St. Paul's-the Roman Catholic Church of St. Peter's in Barclay Street, St. George's in Beekman, the North Dutch in William, the Middle Dutch in Nassau and the Brick Presbyterian, also in Beekman Street. This last, in fact, had already been sold for secular purposes and had been abandoned. The congregation was building a new house up in the field

n much larger structures of a finer and more dignified architecture. Six and seven story buildings were quite common. This represented the practical limitations of a generation which knew not elevators, although the new F

mbers Street. The new Croton Works, with their wonderful aqueduct, the High Bridge, upon which it crossed the ravine of the Harlem, and the dual reservoirs at Forty-second Street and at Eighty-sixth, had rendered

ined soon to house the young Prince of Wales, stood but a block away. At Irving Place and Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets had just been completed the new Academy of Music. New York at last had a real opera-house, with a stage and fittings large enough and adequate to present music-drama upon a scale equal to that of the larger European

rsey City and Hoboken and Astoria and Staten Island; steamboat lines down the harbor to Amboy and to Newark and to Elizabethtown; and up the Sound to Fall River, to Providence and to the Connecticut ports. But the finest steamers of all plied the Hudson. There the rivalry was keenest, the opportunities for profit apparently the greatest. And despite the fact that New York was already the port of many important ocean lines

uses as the Astor, the Brevoort, the St. Nicholas, the Metropolitan, the New York. They went to the theaters and almost invariably they climbed the brown-stone spire of old Trinity, in order to drink in the view that it commanded: the wide sweep of busy city close at ha

ere were few large stores in New York; nothing to be in the least compared with its great department stores of today. One heard of its hotels, its churches, its theaters, its banks, but very little indeed of its mercantile establishments. They were, for the most part, very small and exceedingly individual. They were known as shops and well

the vision of a department store. At any rate the extremely modest establishment which he opened at 204 Sixth Avenue, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth Streets, in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Samuel S. Houghton, devoted itself at f

s despite the fact that not only was he two long blocks distant from Broadway but the particular corner which he had chosen for his store was known locally as unlucky-two or three other stores had gone bankrupt on it. Macy had no intention of going bankrupt. He added to his original shop th

atly expanded in volume. And so, after all, it is barely possible that the canny New Englander may have had the germ of his surpassing idea implanted in his mind, a full decade or more before he had the opportunity to make use of it. Incidentally, it may be set down h

stocks of alpaca, of black bombazine, of silks and muslins, sheetings and pillow-cases and all that with these go. The idea once born was adhered to. As it broadened it gained prosperity. And as a natural sequence there came gradually and with a further steady enlargement of the premises, jewelry, toilet-good

ght to the store a clientele of its own-the most beautiful women of New York, among the most no

distance of his place of business. From this he afterward moved to a larger residence in West Forty-ninth Street. He was a man of sturdy build, of more than medium height and thick-set, extremely affable in manner. He wore a heavy

essful manufacturer or the successful banker, drove his men and drove them hard. Macy was no exception to this rule. If he had been, it is doubtful if he would have lasted long. For while '58 was a year of seeming prosperity in New York it also fol

enue. This woman, Margaret Getchell, was also born in Nantucket. She had been a school-teacher upon the island, until the loss of one of her eyes forced her to seek less confining work. She drifted to New York and, taking advantage of a girlhood acquaintance with Mr. Macy, asked

ft the impress of her remarkable personality upon the store. An attractive figure she was: a small, slight woman, with masses of glorious hair and a pert upturn to her nose, while the loss of her eye

it was she, with the aid of a penknife, a screw-driver and a pair of pliers-I presume that she also used a hair-pin-who took it entirely apart and put it together again. And at another time she trained two cats to permit themselves to be arrayed in doll's clothing and

a saleswoman overcharge a patron two dollars? And did the cashier accept and pass the check? Then the cashier must pay the two dollars out of her meagre pay-envelope on Saturday night. "Overs" were treated the same as "unders." It made no difference that

eems to be the logical reason in your own mind," she kept

gland conscience e

on of three dollars and promptly discharged by Mr. Macy, Miss Getchell dropped everything else and went to work on behalf of the little cashier. Intuitively she felt that another of her sex in the cage had made the thef

g the women cashiers in relays in the cage, to suit her own fancy and her own plans. The petty thefts continued. But not for long. The plans worked. The altered checks were found to be all in the time of

NNINGS O

Avenue just south of 14th Street

is reputed to have said. And upon being asked what that one was, she replied brusquely, "Coffins." Once she embarked Macy upon the grocery business-whole decades before the establishment of the present huge grocery department-and while

e year-and did not return to them until well after dark. Yet they did not complain, for that was the fashion of the times and was recognized as such. Wages were as low as the hours were long. But food-costs also were low, and rentals but a tiny fraction of their present figure

and so wanted the full value for his money. He was skeptical, at the best, about innovations. Moreover, necessity compelled him to keep close watch upon the pennies. At one time he reduced the weekly wages of his cash-girls from two dollars to one-dollar-and-a-half, saying that the war was over and he could no longer afford

Christmas the store was open evenings-supposedly until ten o'clock, as a matter of fact, often until long after ten, when the workers were well toward the point of exhaustion. Other conditions of their labor were slightly better. There were no seats in the aisles and conversation between the clerks was punishable by

mployees. A few nails around the walls sufficed for their outer wraps but there were never enough of these nails to go around. One of the clerks was chosen to

ain. When the men must go to fight in the armies of the North, women must take their places-for only a little while it seemed up to that time. Yet so well did they do much of men's work, that their retention in many of their positions came as a very natural course.

d stay they have, to this very day, even though most of the New York stores still retain men to a considerable extent in some of their departments-notably those dev

live, I'll crow." For his nascent enterprise in New York, however, he adopted a different and, to him at least, a

t mate and then master. It was in the earlier capacity, however, and upon an occasion when he was given a trick at the wheel that Macy found himself in a thick fog off a New England port-one version of the story says Boston, the other New Bedf

the symbol of success. With the strange insistency that was inherent in the man, he was wont to say that the failure of his Boston store was due to the fact that he had not there adopted the star as his trade-ma

laced it in his pocket and thereafter carried it until the day of his death, regarding it as a talisman of real value. There was one souvenir of his early connection of which he was greatly ashamed, however. As a boy he had permit

ell as to its retail sale. It is a bed-rock principle that has come down to today as a foundation of the business that he founded. It is perhaps the one rule of it, from which there is no deviation, at any time or under any circumstance. It is related that a full quarter of a century after Macy had first adopted this principle, one o

t, even for you. But I can tell

oucher for two hundred dollars, stepped over to the cashier's office, h

t your convenience,"

hing his purchases for any ensuing week close to his sales for the preceding one. He did all his own buying at first; and for a number of years thereafter he employed no professional buyers whatsoever

that the installing of such a fair and commonsense principle should once have been regarded as a stroke of daring initiative in merchandising. Yet the fact remains that in the days when Macy's was young, in the average store one bargained and barg

in such plain and readable figures that any fairly educated person might clearly understand. This princi

ve jumped to the quick conclusion that this was due to a desire on the part of the store to make the selling price of any given article seem a little less than it really was. As a matter of fact it was due to nothing of the sort. With all of his respect for the honesty of his sales-force, the Yankee mind of R. H. Macy took few chances-even in that regard. He felt that in almost every transac

Macy. His was not the day of cash-registers or other checking devices. The salesman and the saleswoman in a store was still apt to find himself or her

lly caused him to admit to partnership on the first day of January, 1877, two of his oldest and most valued employees, Abiel T. LaForge and Robert M. Valentine. It had long been rumored in the store that Miss Getchell's years of faithful service were finally to be rewarded by a real partnership in it. But even in 1876, woman's place in modern business had not been firmly enough established to permit so

ive ability. He had great affection for things military. And when Mr. Macy told him of the uniformed attendants of his beloved Bon Marché, LaForge promptly proceeded to place the entire salesforce of Macy's in uniform. Neat uniforms they were, too: of a bluish-grey cadet cloth, and with stiff upstanding collars of a much dar

d begun to fail under the multiplicity of duties. Again he turned toward the sea. He embarked upon a long voyage to Europe; in which he was to combin

d Valentine. However, Mr. LaForge's death in 1878, followed a year later by that of his wife, prevented this scheme from being carried out. The question of changing the name of a well-established business-now come to be one of the great enterprises of the city of New York-was never again brought forward. The name of Macy had attained far too fine a trade value t