The Romance of a Great Store

The department store as we know it today has its natural place in all the large cities of this country, and indeed in many of the large cities of Europe. In line with the trend of modern business methods these glorified editions of the "country store at the cross roads" ofl'er ideal labor conditions to their employees, and pay good salaries. Consequently, a very different type of worker is attracted to these modern marts than could have been found in any dry-goods store of a decade or more ago. In writing "The Romance of a Great Store," Mr. Hungerford has told the story of the development of the Macy store in New York City in such a way as to make it very interesting reading. He introduces many items of human interest, while at the same time giving valuable information to the laity about the development, methods, conditions, volume of business, and organization of this mammoth enterprise. At the conclusion of a brief introduction based on the "Caveat emptor,"-in modern parlance, "Let the buyer beware,"-he dramatically says: "The stage is set. . . . The curtain rises." In the prologue young Rowland Hussey Macy returns to Nantucket from a long whaling voyage. His forbears have lived on this little island for eight generations. But being convinced that the sea is no calling for a married man he has the courage of his convictions and determines to depart for Boston to follow his natural bent for trading in a shop of his own. An interval of some 14 years elapses before the opening of the first act. We are told that during that period young Macy, having failed in his Boston venture went to Haverhill, Massachusetts, on the flip of a coin, where he was more successful. But not content with moderate success, he determined in 1858 to go to New York, a city which he was convinced was soon to become the metropolis of the land. The scene of the first act is laid in the Sixth Avenue store five years or more after its establishment, when it had added unto itself a millinery department in a Fourteenth Street building connecting with the original store at the rear, and was employing as many as one hundred workers. The second act opens in the Fourteenth Street store of 1883- a big, comfortable, homely group of red brick buildings extending from Thirteenth to Fourteenth Streets on Sixth Avenue and 150 feet back on each street, and employing some 1500 men and women. Then comes the last act at the Macy store of today-the Thirty-fourth Street store- employing over 5000 folk, and located almost on the spot that Rowland H. Macy had called to his daughter's attention 50 years ago by saying: A half century hence and the business of New York is to be centered between Thirty-fourth Street and Forty-second Street. Here (the corner where the Marbridge Building now stands) is to be the future business heart of this wonderful city. -Administration: The Journal of Business Analysis and Control, Volume 3 [1922]