Part 37

e of A. T. Stewart. His store was the center of trade. When he moved, the trade moved with him. To all charitable objects he gave liberally. He gave to all churches, and was recognized as a sort of clergyman himself, and in his dress he managed to look the part. The ten per cent off to clergymen and schoolteachers was his innovation. This ten per cent was supposed to be his profit, but forty per cent would have been nearer it. Of course the same discount had to be given to any member of a clergyman's or a teacher's family. And so we hear of one of Stewart's cashiers saying, "Over half of the people in New York are clergymen or teachers." The temptation to pass one's self off for a clergyman at Stewart's store was a bait that had no lure when you visited Girard College. All this was but a part and parcel of the times--an index of the Zeitgeist. * * * * * A. T. Stewart was alive, alert and sensitive to the spirit of the times. He kept abreast with the best thought of the best people. The idea of opening boxes and bales on the sidewalk was abandoned early in the game; and the endeavor was to show the fabric only under the most favorable conditions. Stewart was reaching out for a higher clientele. The motto became, "Not how cheap, but how good." If A. T. Stewart sold goods at an average profit of, say, thirty per cent, he could well afford to sell a small portion of his stock at cost, or even at ten per cent below cost. He knew his stocks, and he made it a point never to carry goods over from one year to another. Before he held one of his famous "Cost Sales," he would personally work all night, taking down from the shelves and out of drawers and showcases everything in the store. Then he himself would dictate what each article should be sold for. Here was exercise for a mind that worked by intuition. The master decided instantly on how much this thing would bring. In railroad managing there are two ways of making rates. One is the carefully figured-out cost of transportation. The other plan is to make a rate that will move the tonnage. A regular passenger rate is the rate that will afford a profit. An "excursion rate," a "homeseekers' rate," an "old-home rate," is the one that experience shows is necessary to tempt people to travel. Drygoods deteriorate in quality when kept on the shelves for several months. Worse than that, they cease to attract the buyers. People go where there is life, activity, and are moved by that which is youthful, new and fresh. Old stocks become dead stocks, and dead stocks mean dead business and dead men, or bankruptcy. When it came to selling old stocks, Stewart paid no attention to the cost. He marked the tag in big, plain figures in red ink at the price he thought would move the goods. And usually he was right. We hear of his marking a piece of dress-goods forty-nine cents a yard. A department manager came in and in alarm explained that the goods cost fifty-three. "That has nothing to do with the case," replied Stewart; "we would not buy it today at fifty-three, and we do not want the stuff on our shelves even at forty-nine." "But," said the manager, "this is a Cost Sale, and if we sell below cost we should explain that fact to our customers." And the answer was: "Young man, you must tell the customer only what she will believe. The actual truth is for ourselves." Stewart worked for an average of profit and this he secured. His receipts mounted steadily year by year, until in Eighteen Hundred Fifty they were ten thousand dollars a day. And when he moved into his Business Palace at Astor Place, Tenth Street and Broadway, the sales jumped to an average of over fifty thousand dollars a day. * * * * * When A. T. Stewart built his Business Palace in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five, it was the noblest business structure in America. Much of the iron used in it was supplied by Peter Cooper, and that worthy man was also consulted as to the plans. Just a square away from Stewart's Business Palace stands Cooper Union. In selecting this location A. T. Stewart was influenced largely by the fact that it was so near to that center of art and education which Peter Cooper had made worldwide in fame. Stewart said, "My store shall vie with your museum, and people will throng it as they do an exposition." And his prophecy proved true. At his death, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, Stewart was the richest man in New York, save an Astor and a Vanderbilt, and these had inherited their wealth--wealth made through the rise of real estate--while Stewart had made his money in legitimate trade. A. T. Stewart was worth forty million dollars. This vast estate was mostly frittered away, honeycombed and moth-eaten, by hungry attorneys. The business was carried on by Hessians who worked both ends against the middle, and let the estate foot the deficits. A. T. Stewart had a genius for trade, but he had no gift for giving. The world needs a school for millionaires, so that, since they can not take their millions with them, they can learn to leave their money wisely and well. After an up-and-down--mostly down--career of a decade, the Business Palace was bought by John Wanamaker. Again, and almost instantly, the Business Palace became a center of light and education, and the splendid aisles that a generation before had known the tread of the best people of Manhattan, again felt their step. When Stewart built the Business Palace, people said, "Oh, it is too far uptown--nobody will go there." But they were wrong. When John Wanamaker moved in, many said, "Oh, it's beautiful--but you know, it is too far downtown--nobody will go there." And these were as wrong as the first. "Where McGinty sits is the head of the table." The trade siphoned itself thither under the magic name of Wanamaker, as though the shade of A. T. Stewart had been summoned from its confines in the Isles of Death. In Stewart's day no sign had been placed on the building. He said, "Everybody will know it is A. T. Stewart's!" And they did. After his death the place was plastered with signs that called in throaty falsetto at the passer-by, like eager salesmen on the Midway who try to entice people to enter. The new management took all these signs down, and by the main entrance placed a modest tablet carrying this inscription: John Wanamaker Successor to A. T. Stewart It was a comment so subtle that it took New York a year to awaken to its flavor of tincture of iron. That little sign reminds one of how Disraeli was once dining with an American and two other Englishmen. In the course of the conversation the American proudly let slip the information that he traced a pedigree to parents who came to America in the Mayflower. One of the Englishmen here coughed, and vouchsafed the fact that he traced a lineage to Oliver Cromwell. A little pause followed, and the other guest spat, muzzled his modesty and said he traced to William the Conqueror. Disraeli, with great deliberation, made a hieroglyphic on the tablecloth with his fork and said, "And I trace a pedigree to Moses, who walked and talked with God on Mount Sinai, fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ." John Wanamaker leaped the gulf of twenty years and traced direct to A. T. Stewart, as well he might, for it was Stewart's achievement that had first fired his imagination to do and become. A. T. Stewart was the greatest merchant of his time. And John Wanamaker has been not only a great merchant, but a teacher of merchants. And the John Wanamaker Stores now form a High School of economic industrialism. John Wanamaker is still teaching, tapping new reservoirs of power as the swift-changing seasons pass. As a preacher and a teacher he has surely surpassed the versatile Stewart. * * * * * To succeed in business today it is not enough that you should look out for Number One: you must also look out for Number Two. That is, you must consider the needs of the buyer and make his interests your own. To sell a person something he does not want, or to sell him something at a price above its actual value, is a calamity--for the seller. Business is built on confidence. We make our money out of our friends--our enemies will not trade with us. In law the buyer and the seller are supposed to be people with equal opportunity to judge of an article and pass on its value. Hence there is a legal maxim, "Caveat emptor"--"Let the buyer beware"--and this provides that when an article is once purchased and passes into the possession of the buyer it is his, and he has no redress for short weight, count or inferior quality. Behind that legal Latin maxim, "Caveat emptor," the merchant stood for centuries, safely entrenched. It was about Eighteen Hundred Sixty-five that it came to John Wanamaker, a young merchant just starting business in Philadelphia, that the law is wrong in assuming that buyer and seller stand on a parity, and have an equal opportunity for judging values. The dealer is a specialist, while the buyer, being a consumer of a great number of different things, has only a general knowledge, at best. The person with only a general idea as to values, pitted against a trained specialist, is at a great disadvantage. Therefore, to be on ethical ground the seller must be the friend of the buyer--not his antagonist. For a seller to regard the buyer as his prey is worse than non-ethical--it is immoral--a violation of the Golden Rule. These things came to the young man, John Wanamaker, with a great throb and thrill, and he at once proceeded to put his theories into execution, and on them his business was founded. The One-Price System--all goods marked in plain figures, and money back if not satisfied--these things were to revolutionize the retail trade of the world. John Wanamaker, of all men in America, seems to know that to stand still is to retreat. For more than forty years he has led the vanguard of the business world. He has been a teacher of merchants. His insight, initiative, originality and prophetic judgment have set the retailers of the world a pace. Many have learned much from him, and all have been influenced by him. Whether they knew it or not, and whether they would acknowledge it if they did know it, matters little. Professor Zueblin once said of William Morris: "There is not a well-furnished house in Christendom but that shows the influence of his good taste and his gracious ideas of economy, harmony and honesty in home decoration." Likewise, we can truthfully say that there is not a successful retail store in America that does not show the influence of A. T. Stewart and his legitimate successor, John Wanamaker. H. H. ROGERS Success is rooted in reciprocity. He who does not benefit the world is headed for bankruptcy on the high-speed clutch. _H. H. Rogers_ [Illustration: H. H. ROGERS] One proof that H. H. Rogers was a personage and not a person lies in the fact that he was seldom mentioned in moderate language. Lawson passed him a few choice tributes; Ida Tarbell tarred him with her literary stick; Upton Sinclair declared he was this and that; Professor Herren averred that he bore no likeness whatever to Leo Tolstoy--and he might also have added, neither did he resemble Francis of Assisi or Simeon Stylites. Those who did not like him usually pictured him by recounting what he was not. My endeavor in this sketch will be simply to tell what he was. Henry Huddleston Rogers was a very human individual. He was born in the village of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, in the year Eighteen Hundred Forty. He died in New York City in Nineteen Hundred Nine, in his seventieth year. He was th