The Romance of a Great Store

concerned. But not so for Macy's. Particularly not so when she has given orders that the goods be "sent," either to her own home or to the home of some friend. In such cases the larg

ss machine of Herald Square has a

rt, somewhat faded and battered, yet still a red delivery wagon and showing clearly the name of the house it served, R. H. Macy & Company. It is a treasured relic

. Woods regards the cart with tender affection, since it was he who once was the human horse who strode between its shafts. That was back in 1873, long years before the store had moved north from the once tree-shaded Fourteenth Street. Mr. Macy, himself, was still very much in charge of the enterprise and was

andise between the store and its outlying distributing stations, down to the small one-ton truck, which is used at its greatest advantage in city street distribution. And an astonishing number of horse-drawn vehicles remain. That is, astonishing to the uninitiated layman, who perhaps has been led to believe that the motor truck in this, its heyday of perfection, could hardly be surpassed for any form of carrying. As a matter of fact, however, the department-stores as well as the express companies, skilled in the multiple distribution of small packages, have, after a careful and intensive study of the motor trucks-which has resu

dition and upkeep of the vehicles of a high-grade department-store show this. "Spic-and-span" is hardly the phrase by which to describe them. Fresh paint and gold striping-the smooth sides so cleaned and polished, that

west side of New York went to a department-s

I am convinced that if you would turn it over to me, I co

rd-boiled" is the word that might well be used to

aid he. "How would y

ttle less elaborate. It could be just as efficient

ok his head

we were to do that, we should lose fifty per cent.

d according to a carefully set-down program and practice it is wrapped right within the floor upon which the selling department is situated, and then dropped into a chute which leads with a straight, swift run into th

floor. This "revolving-ring," in purpose very much like the great and slowly revolving disc-like wooden wheels used in the freight stations of the express companies for a similar service, is, in reality, much larger than they. It is a "square-ring"-if I may use that paradoxical phrase-built of four slow

) and other essential information. It is the addresses, however, which attract the eyes of the genii of the "revolving-ring." In their minds these fall into four great categories: City, meaning those portions of Manhattan Island south of Seventy-second Street on the east side and Ninety-ninth Street on the west; Harlem and the Bronx, the incorporated city of New York north of those two streets; Brooklyn and New

tled to free delivery within any of the Eastern States, of $5 and over to any of the Middle States as well, of $10 and over to any corner of the whole United States. Freight and express prepayments are arranged upon a somewhat simila

o her habitat-or it may be an eight or ten-yard piece of heavy silk for her new evening gown, or the evening gown itself. In any case it receives the same care and attention. We have alr

ip, torn originally from the salesclerk's book and pasted upon the package's outer wrappings. "Harlem" hi

e number is purely fictitious) takes in West One Hundred and Fourth Street. Into compartment No. 87 goes milady's packages. But not, of course, until the clerical young man technically known as the sheet-writer has made a record of it. Into his records, also, go all the other packages destined that day for that particular room. If there should

in Manhattan have not gone in conditions of near-impassability, there are at least two regular deliveries to every part of the island south of One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street, with a single one at least to every other part of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, to say nothing

When she says "C. O. D." in Macy's the salesclerk immediately and courteously replies: "Have you tried having a depositor's account, madam?" A good many of them have, and all who have have liked the method. Yet the C. O. D. still has its great appeal. And out of all the deliveries from the big store in Herald Square more than half of them are collect-on-delivery. This means, in turn, a good deal of complication for the del

ernment. They know that the man who shouts "Macy's" up the areaway or elevator-shaft once or twice a week is apt to become the same sort of good family friend and ally as the iceman or the butcher's boy. The man knows that, too: particularly in the vicinity of Christmas week. His own trials are many and vari

r the movies for the afternoon, Mrs. Blinks, who lives next door, will take in her packages. The Macy man has been long enough on the route to know that by this time. Such knowledge is a part of his stock in tra

elivery service. If she lives in the first of these-Forest Hills-she will be served, not direct from the Herald Square establishment, but from the little Long Island community of Queens. Fifteen wagon and motor truck routes run from the Macy sub-station there, wh

mbered by travelers upon the trains to Boston chiefly as the place of the enormous cemetery. It serves the great suburban territory north of the

d that immediate vicinage draws its merchandise through a fourth sub-station, right in the heart of Newark, itself, and operating ten regular motor truck routes. Th

Lake on the south. This is an expensive feature of Macy service, and one for which the store receives no extra compensation. It is one of the many expensive things that must be charged to profit-

tables and garages in West Nineteenth Street and also in West Thirty-eighth, Manhattan. Together all of these form a very considerable fleet upon wheels, with a personnel in keeping. For the delivery routes alone, and taking no account of the sizable force em

close of an exceptionally busy day, say toward the end of the pre-Christmas season. Twenty-five thousand packages is an average day's work for that basement room; upon occasion it has gone well over forty-one thousand. It should be borne in mind, moreover, that a package does not al

r decided benefit in the cash system-not alone to the store, but, because of its habit of passing on its economies, to its patrons as well. Yet in the course of a year a considerable number of packages must come back. Despite a thorough educational system and constant oversight and admonition

addresses. But there come times when even its resourcefulness is entirely baffled. Then the undelivered goods must go to the store room until some properly accredited human being comes up somewhere, sometime to demand them. In an astonishing number of cases the some one does not come up sometime or somewhere. In such a case after a fair length of

cases up to thirty days without advance payment, in others up to sixty upon partial payment and in still others up to s

that are entirely too heavy for the conveyor-chutes and the "revolving-ring." A notable one of these is an electric washing-machine, which, crated, will weigh slightly in excess of two hundred pounds. Shipments such as these go to the basement on hand trucks and by the freight elevators. There they are boxed and crat

freight elevators of the store are of the largest size ever designed; so big that a heavy motor truck is no particular strain upon their individual capacity. One of these trucks can be and is driven straight to and from the ninth floor. After it has reached the department the placing

quare to the far limits of a far-flung city. The men who ride them are upon the outposts of salesmanship. Yet through system and through organization they are forever closely connected with it. The blood that courses through your finger