class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 21]"/> 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 discharge. They might make their personal purchases only on Friday mornings, between eight and nine o'clock, and they received no discount whatsoever. In Mr. Macy's day the only discounts ever given were to the New York Juvenile Asylum in Thirteenth Street nearby, which was an institution peculiarly close to his heart.

There were no lockers in the early days of the old store. In one of its upper floors several small rooms were set aside as a crude sort of cloak-room for the employees. 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 come early and stay late in order to supervise these rooms. Inasmuch as there was neither glory nor remuneration in this task, it was not eagerly sought after.

Nevertheless, here was the enlightened day at hand when women would and did work in stores—not alone in great numbers but in a great majority and in many cases to the exclusion of men. It was one of the sweeping economic changes that the Civil War brought in its train. 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. So while the decade that preceded the Civil War found few or no professions open to women—save those of teaching or of domestic employment—the one which followed it found them coming in increasing numbers, into a steadily increasing number and variety of endeavors.

So it was then that the great war of the last century brought women behind the counters of the stores—Macy's was no exception to the invasion. They came to stay. And 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 devoted to the sale of furniture, dress-goods and boots and shoes. For some varieties of stock the male clerk still is the most suitable and successful sort of salesman.

In his store in Haverhill, Mr. Macy had adopted as his trade-mark a rooster bearing the motto in his beak, "While I live, I'll crow." For his nascent enterprise in New York, however, he adopted a different and, to him at least, a far more significant device, which to this day remains the symbol of the great enterprise which still bears his name.

It was a star, a star of red, if you will. And back of that simple symbol rests a story: It seems that in the days of his youth when he sailed the northern seas in a whaling ship he had gradually acquired such proficiency that he was made first 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 Bedford. To catch the familiar lights of the harbor gateways was out of the question. The cloud banks lay low against the shore. Overhead there was a rift or two, and in one of them, well ahead of the vessel's prow, there gleamed a brilliant star.

For the young skipper this was literally a star of hope. His quick wit made it a guiding star. By it he steered his course and so successfully into the safety of the harbor that the star became for him thereafter 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-mark. He made no such mistake in his New York enterprise. The star became the forefront of his business. And to this day it is a prominent feature of the main façade of the great establishment which bears his name.

Mr. Macy never lost his boyhood affection for the sea—the one thing inborn of his ancestral blood. It is related of him that one morning on his way to the store he found a small silver anchor lying on the sidewalk, picked it up, placed 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 permitted his shipmates to tattoo the backs of his hands. In later years he regretted this exceedingly, and developed a habit of talking to strangers with the palms of his hands held uppermost, so that they might not see the tattoo marks.

From the very beginning Macy adopted certain fixed and definite policies for his business. These showed not alone the vision but the breadth and bigness of the man. For one of the most important of them he decided that in his business he would have cash transactions only. This applied both ways—to the purchase of his merchandise as well 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 of the then partners of the concern was approached by a warm personal friend, a man of high financial standing, who said that he wished to make a rather elaborate purchase that morning, but not having either cash or a check handy, asked for an exception to the no-credit rule. The partner shook his head, smiled, rather sadly, and said:

"No, Mr. Blank, I cannot do that, even for you. But I can tell you what I can, and shall do."

And so saying he reached for his own check-book, wrote out a personal voucher for two hundred dollars, stepped over to the cashier's office, had it cashed and presented the money, in crisp green bills to his friend.

"You can repay me, at your convenience," was all that he said.

Convinced that trust—as he insisted upon calling credit—was a millstone upon the neck of the merchant—let alone a struggling man of thirty-five who previously had known failure—Macy insisted upon matching 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. In this way he kept his margin closely in hand and at all times well within the range of safety. There was little of the spirit of the gambler in him. It would not have sat well with his Yankee blood.

A second principle of the store in those early days which has come easily and naturally down to these—when it is accepted retailing principle everywhere—was the marking of the selling price upon each and every article. It seems odd to think today 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 bargained constantly. There was no single price set upon any article. Even when one went into as fine and showy a store as New York might boast one bartered. Caveat emptor, "Let the buyer beware," was seemingly the dominating retail motto of those days.

But not in Mr. Macy's. The selling price went on every article displayed in the store in those days and in such plain and readable figures that any fairly educated