VI. The Macy Family

In the bazaars of ancient Bagdad, the human factor was not only the great but the sole dominating influence. The ancient Bagdadians, including those commuters and suburbanites, far and near, who came cameling into town at more or less frequent intervals, did business, not with a machine, not with a system, but with men. Which, being freely translated, meant bargaining. They not merely bargained, but haggled, and haggled at great length. Prices? There were none. The price was what you made it—you and the merchant with whom you finally came to agreement; if finally you did come to agreement.

In the great bazaars of the modern Bagdad one does not need to bargain or to haggle. One is doing business primarily with a system. Prices are fixed, and firmly fixed. This is so generally understood and accepted a rule today that it would be a mere waste of time to discuss it at further length, save possibly to recall once again the large part which Rowland Hussey Macy and the men who followed him played in giving a Gibraltar-like firmness to this solid modern business principle.

Yet even in these same modern, scientifically organized bazaars of today, the system rarely ever can be better than the men who direct it. Four thousand years of business progress between the two Bagdads have not taken from man his God-given power to make or break the best of systems. And Macy's, with its own business system organized, carefully developed and upbuilded through sixty-three long years, is still dependent to no little degree upon the faith and loyalty and interest of its men and women; that same thing which in the days of the war just past we first learned to know by that new name—morale.

Under the sign of the Red Star there are at all times these days not less than five thousand workers; in the Christmas season this pay-roll list runs quickly to seven thousand or over. Then it is that the Macy family takes its most impressive dimensions. Seven thousand souls! It is the population of a good sized town! It is four good regiments—it is the New York Hippodrome with every one of its seats filled and eighteen hundred folk left standing up!

Yet even the all-the-year minimum of five thousand men and women—roughly speaking, one-third men and two-thirds women—is an impressive array. It is a human force which only gains impressiveness when one finds that all but three hundred of it are employed beneath a single roof. The small outside group chiefly comprises those in the delivery stations.

To bring action, foresight, co-operation, correlation—and finally morale—into such a force is a thing not gained by merely talking or thinking about it, but by long study, experimentation and great continued effort. Which means, in turn, that Macy's, among several other things, is a responsibility. For, as we shall presently see, there are any number of problems in addition to those of buying and selling; problems in the solving of which unceasing demands are made upon the store's time, money and heart. It is, in the last analysis a matter of mere good business at that. Yet at Macy's it has been considerably more. And the store's satisfaction in realizing that it was a very early and a very advanced pioneer in developing personnel—and morale—as necessary factors in modern merchandising is a very large one indeed.

A machine or a family—or a department-store—is only as good as its component parts, and by the fact that there is a strict interdependence between the whole and its parts, the success of Macy's must mean that the rank and file of its employees maintain a high average of intelligence, initiative and loyalty. That these qualities are successfully co-ordinated in Macy's is due to real leadership, and it is to this same leadership that we may look for the basis of the store's morale.

Little things indicate. And indicate clearly. Here on the wall of the passageway at the head of the main employee's stair is a placard which reads:

"Once each month three prizes are given to the employees who make the best suggestions for the betterment of store service or conditions. Don't hesitate to try for a prize, even if your suggestion does not appear important. We need your ideas and like to have as many as possible presented each month. Write plainly and drop your suggestions in the boxes furnished for this purpose. The first prize is $10.00, the second $5.00, and the third $2.00."

Here is only a single one of the many evidences of Macy co-operation with the employees. Yet it illustrates clearly the house's policy of making its workers feel an interest in and beyond the mere amount of money that they draw at the end of the week. Not a few of these prizes are awarded for suggestions as to procedure in technical matters relating to the details of the business. Some of them result in the saving of time—and consequently money—and others in the improvement of working conditions. For example: ten dollars was awarded to the man who suggested that the doors of fitting-rooms be equipped with signals to show whether or not they are occupied; five dollars went to the one who made the suggestion that the fire-axe and hook standing in the corner of the customers' stairway be placed on the wall in a suitable case so that children could not play with them; two dollars to her who advanced the very reasonable idea that a scratch-pad in the 'phone booths would prevent memoranda and art manifestations being made upon the walls. Here are a few suggestions that were proffered and acted upon. The entire list runs to a considerable length.

There is another notice upon the big bulletin board at the head of the employees' stairs—a sort of town-crier affair with temporary and permanent notices of interest to the store's workers—which tells the working force that when vacancies occur within the big store they will be promptly posted on this and other bulletin boards. The workers are advised to apply for any position which they may feel they are competent to fill. Ambition is not curbed in Macy's. On the contrary, it is stimulated to every possible extent. The employee is restricted only by his own limitations, if he has them. It is a firmly-fixed house policy to promote, wherever it is at all possible, from its own ranks. Among its high-salaried men and women are not a few who have worked their way up from the bottom. In fact, among these six or eight of the best paid men in the store, is one who boasts that he first came to New York fifteen years ago, with but a suitcase and eleven dollars in his pocket.

The employment department must have been very much on the job when it hired this man. It generally is very much on its job.

Obviously, the hiring of workers for an enterprise as huge as Macy's cannot be conducted on any hit-and-miss plan. We have gone far enough with the store in these pages to see that hit-and-miss does not figure at any time or place in its varied functionings—and nowhere less than in its employment department. The hiring of new workers for the store is indeed a branch of the business machine that receives constant and great care and systematic attention. A store must employ the right sort of people in order to be a good store. This is fairly axiomatic these days.

These workers are gathered in a variety of ways—by volunteer applications, by newspaper advertisements (in New York and outside of it), by outside free employment agencies, by circular appeals generally to educational institutions, and, best of all, through the solicitation of its regular employees. There is no appeal for a worker that, in my opinion, can compare with the suggestion made by an employee that the place of his or her employment is a good place for his or her friends, as well.

I am warmly concurred with in this opinion by the store's employment manager, a big, upstanding man, who in his Harvard days was a famous football player. The rules of that fine game he has brought to the understanding of his present problem.

"One of the most desirable class of applicants is that brought by our own employees," he says, frankly, "as in hiring these people we have a feeling of security; especially if they have been brought in by some of the old and most loyal employees. It has been our experience that such applicants enter more readily into the spirit of their work and develop more rapidly than those obtained from other sources. We advertise in the classified columns of the newspapers only when it is absolutely necessary. Our regular daily advertisements keep the store constantly before the public eye—and generally that is enough.

"During the recent war period, however, we had no scruples about advertising, as nearly every other line of endeavor was in the same boat as we. Never before have the newspapers carried so much classified advertising. Yet when all is said and done, besides the moral undesirability of this source of supply, we found it also very expensive indeed.

"Some people believe that the function of an employment department is merely to keep in touch with the labor market and engage employees," he continued. "This is erroneous. The duty of this employment department is to raise the standard of efficiency of the whole working force by the proper selection, placing, following up and promotion of employees and so bringing about a condition that will result in their rendering as nearly as possible one hundred per cent. service to the store. That is the real reason why employment departments such as this first came into existence. Business some years ago awoke to the realization of the fact that its indiscriminate handling of the entire labor problem was causing a tremendous economic waste, not alone to the employee and to society, but to itself. It then began for the first time to deal with the problem of its personnel in a scientific and practical way."

The market for workers—like pretty nearly every other sort of market—is, as we have just seen, subject to fluctuations; there are seasons when the employment manager—ranking as the store's fourth assistant general manager—must look sharply about him for the maintenance of its ranks, other seasons when long files of would-be workers present themselves each morning at his department doors. For the five or six years of the World War period the first set of conditions prevailed. It was difficult for any department-store, ranked by the Washington authorities in war days as a non-essential industry, always to maintain its full working force, to say nothing of its morale. Recently the pendulum has swung in the other direction. America is not exempt from the labor conditions which are prevailing in the other great nations of the world. And there are plenty of people who would work in Macy's. Yet the store has refused to use this situation as a club over its workers. Throughout the darkest days of the business depression it told them that it had no intention either of reducing its force of workers (beyond the usual lay-off of extra Christmas people) or of reducing their individual salaries. Which was a considerable help to its Esprit de corps.

Yet even in the hardest days of labor shortage Macy's never ceased to be most particular as to the quality of its help. Applicants for positions underneath its roof were scrutinized with great care to make sure as to their desirability as additions to the organization. And before they finally were accepted and turned over to the training school, they were examined, with as much thoroughness as if there were hundreds of others in the file behind them, from whom the store might pick and choose.

All this is part and parcel of the definite management policy of the employment department, just as it is part of its policy to make sure that the prospective member of the Macy family has more than one arrow to his or her quiver. Alternate capabilities are assets not to be scorned. And there is an obvious store flexibility in being able to use its human units in a variety of endeavor that the management can hardly afford to ignore. And it does not.

There is a function of the employment department of the modern business machine that Macy's recognizes as second in importance only to that of engaging its workers. I am referring to that moment when they may leave its employ, either from choice or otherwise. If "otherwise"—in the colloquial phrasing of the store being "laid-off"—there is the greatest of care and discretion used.

"Remember the Golden Rule," says its general manager to his assistants, and says it again and again. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And remember that there is never a time when this Golden Rule is more necessary or applicable in business than in the moment of discharge."

Translated into the terms of hard fact this means that in Macy's no buyer, no department head, no department manager has the power to dismiss one of his workers. He may recommend the "lay-off" but only the general manager himself may actually accomplish the act. In which case he first refers the case to one of his five assistants, for personal investigation and recommendation.

When the saleswoman—or man, as the case may be—leaves of her own volition the matter becomes, in certain senses, more serious. Why is she dissatisfied? Are the conditions of labor more onerous at Macy's than in the other stores of the city, the remuneration less satisfactory? Macy's does not intend that either of these causes shall obtain beneath its roof. So the retiring employee, before she may leave its pay-roll, is carefully examined as to her reasons for going. The last impressions of the store must be quite as good as the earliest ones—even upon the minds of its workers. And a careful system of observation and of record has been upbuilded to make sure that this is being obtained; which may often lead to valuable opportunities for the correction of store system, particularly in the relationship between Macy's and its employees.

We come now face to face with the training department—another individual organization strong enough and important enough to demand as its head an officer of the rank and title of assistant general manager. But before we come to consider it in some of the many aspects of its workings—before we come to see how in these recent years education has come to be the hand-maiden of merchandising, let us consider the actual experience of a young woman who recently entered the employment of the store. She was a college woman—a good many of the store people are these days. The mass of young women who come trooping out of our colleges each June are apt to find their employment bents trending more or less to a common course and in great cycles. Yesterday the cycle was teaching; the day before, literature or the sciences; today it is merchandising. The great department-stores of our metropolitan cities in America are, as we already know, today paying their executives and sub-executives salaries more than commensurate with the earnings of those in other lines of industry and well ahead of those in the learned professions. Moreover, they have brought their hours of employment down to a point at least approaching those of other business organizations. Their appeal thus has become measurably greater. And they are reaping the reward—in the attraction of a higher grade of executive young women.

"The Monday morning that I came to work was, of course, rather hard—it's not easy to go into any strange and new place and be crazy about it right at first! There were a lot of us—all new girls—and it was fun to see what they did to us. We went from the employment office, where there is a good sign reading 'Say "we" not "I" and "ours" not "my",' to our locker room (which, by the way, is the best of any of the places I have ever worked in) and then up to the training department for a little first time; after which they sent us to our respective departments. We felt rather like ping-pong balls, being knocked hither and thither, and though we didn't know why we were doing any of these things we trusted that those holding the ping-pong bat did.

"While we were waiting up there in the training department, we had a chance to get to know each other a little—two or three of us were charmingly Irish—and time to note the people busy about that department. Nice efficient-looking people they were—and of course we labeled and cubby-holed them. One man, we all decided, could well be a matinee idol and another might have hailed from down Greenwich Village way.

"At last we parted and went down through the store to our own departments—and on the way any importance which we may have felt was quickly submerged in seeing what a distressingly small part we were of the large Macy organization. Even so, we later found out how many, many other 'we's' like each of us could make a deal of trouble for it, should we fail to carry on our work correctly. A talk we had from the store manager, a little later on, made me feel directly responsible to the poor fellows who are the Macy delivery men. If I were not careful to write the address clearly in my salesbook, the delivery man would get in trouble—and all because of my handwriting! Funny, how we were all linked up together.

"Well, to go back, I got to my department feeling decidedly unimportant, and was put to work behind a counter which sold women's and children's woolen gloves and women's kid gloves. That was the first counter I had ever sold from. In other stores I have sold from what are known as 'open departments'; the counter trade was a revelation to me. Did you ever notice the lack of space behind the counters in the stores? Well, with the Christmas rush and all the extra salesgirls, it is lucky indeed that some of us have a sense of humor.

"I had not been behind the counter for two whole minutes before a customer came along and asked for something. I tried to look wise and answer. It was all terribly new. The customers are always so plentiful in Macy's that a new girl hardly has time to have the old girls tell her about the stock. Moreover, our counter was very near the store's main entrance—which meant that we were an informal but very busy little information bureau on our own account—not only about Macy's but apparently anything else in the city of New York.

"Of course, I didn't have a salesbook that day; I didn't receive one until after I had had some training and was beginning to know something about the Macy system. However, customers could not see the 'new-and-green' written on my face, so I waited on them thick and fast; even through that first morning. And a wild time I had of it—gym was never so exhausting as stooping down to look for a certain pair of gloves which must be a certain color combined with a certain size, plus a certain style and so on. Some people must stay up nights figuring along the lines of permutations and combinations, so as to work out some unheard of ones for the things they ask for in Macy's. The other girls were mighty nice to me, though, and as helpful as could be. And our having to almost walk upon one another and squeezing past and bumping so often—why, you all get clubby, mighty soon. At the end of that first day I was rather wrecked, though happy—for in my desire to find things for customers speedily I had, in bending down, burst through the knee of one stocking, broken a corset-stay and ripped loose a garter! Henceforth I managed to dress in a manner prepared for doing gymnastic stunts, such as deep-knee-bending and leap-frog.

"My first lesson on the store system came on my first day in the store—and then one every day for an hour, during the whole first week. I liked that—for then I knew how things were supposed to be done. They even took us out into departments that were not busy early in the morning and had us make out certain kinds of sales right behind the counter, and carry the whole thing through—all that was lacking being the real customer. It gave us confidence and showed us things that we thought we knew, but that, when it came right down to it, we didn't know at all. The training department also gave us pamphlets and notices about how to use the telephones and telling us to do certain things, as well as how our salary and commission were to be figured. Also one leaflet told us about Macy's underselling policy, and what we should do in case a customer reported merchandise as being cheaper somewhere else—and, although I had heard before of this policy of Macy's, I came to believe in it faithfully, after I had read the booklet.

"When you're new in a department the 'higher up' man can do much to make you feel glad that you are there. My section manager and buyer were both fine. The buyer told us in a talk she gave us all about how she'd been with Macy's for twenty-five years; that she had worked for several years, when she first began, at six dollars a week. She made us feel that there surely must be a chance for every one of us—that a firm that is worth staying with that long must be pretty fine indeed—and that it was just up to us individually, whether or not we would go ahead. As for our section manager, he was always so nice in the way he handled any transaction with us—giving us an extended lunch-hour or signing any sales checks that needed his 'O. K.' In many stores the section managers are so disagreeable about doing their work that the salesgirls hate to have them 'O. K.' things—but I have found it quite the opposite at Macy's. And when he had the time and saw any of us looking glum or tired our man would talk to us and succeed in cheering us up.

"There are many things, too, that I discovered Macy's doing for its employees—all sorts of clubs and parties. One of the most useful of the first of these I found to be the umbrella club. All I had to do one day when it began unexpectedly to rain was to go up to the training department, deposit fifty cents and receive an umbrella. If I left Macy's within the month, I would get my fifty cents back. Of course, I was to return the umbrella the very first clear day but any time thereafter that I needed one I could go upstairs and get it.

"Then, too, there's the recreation room—you have two fifteen-minute relief periods a day in the store in addition to your lunch time. You can go to the dressing rooms and wash up a bit and then go to the recreation room, where there are plenty of large, comfy chairs, a piano, books and the like. The room is a veritable social center all the day long—I always found lots of friends there, no matter at what time I took my relief periods. And you go back to your work refreshed and 'full of pep' once again. Another place where you have a chance to see your friends is the employees' lunchroom—and it certainly is a popular place. Despite the clatter and rush, the Macy folks have a good time in their cafeteria; the crowds that eat there every day prove the wholesomeness of its food. It is good home cooking and, as far as its cheapness is concerned—well, I've eaten veritable dinners there at the noon hour, day after day, and never had my check total more than twenty-five cents; with thirteen or fifteen nearer the average.

"One morning we all came early to the store—to a courtesy rally. Thousands of us—yes, literally thousands of us—gathered on the main floor, on the central stair and everywhere roundabout it, and we sang songs about smiling; and other optimistic things. Then, after good addresses by Mr. Straus and Mr. Spillman, we all sang again and, in response to an inquiry from one of the store executives, all shouted that we would try to carry on with the new Macy slogan of 'A smile with every package' and 'a thank you as goodbye.'"

Frank testimony, indeed. And honest.

To bring this atmosphere about the worker in the store may no more be the result of hit-and-miss than the right sort of hiring. In the modern marts of the new Bagdad the creation of morale, not merely the retention of a good industrial relationship between a store and its workers but a constant bettering of it, has come to be as important a problem as that of the buying or the delivering of its merchandise, or even its problems of making its public constantly acquainted with its offerings and advantages.

The work of such a department—in Macy's the department of training—divides itself quite logically and clearly into two great avenues; the one educational, the other recreational. Each takes hold of the newcomer to the store almost from the very moment that he or she enters upon its lists of employment. The new salesgirl's name is hardly upon the rolls of the department to which she is assigned before a member of the store's reception committee is upon her heels and steering her straight through all the maze of fresh experiences that necessarily must await the novitiate. She is told all about her time disc of brass—the individual coin that bears her distinctive number (built up of her department number plus her own serial one) which she must drop into its allotted slot at the employees' entrance when she comes to it in the morning and which she must see is returned to her before the day is done in order that she may have it to use again upon the morrow; how, going from the locker room to her department at the day's beginning, she must sign its own time-roll, which then becomes accountable for her comings and goings through the rest of the day; how she can go and when she must return; how she is paid—her salary, her quota, her commissions, her bonuses.

All of this might sound complicated, indeed, to the new girl, were it not for the kindness of her assigned "committeeman." Complications in the hands of a woman who has been through the mill, herself, and who has come to see how they are really not complications at all, but cogs in the grinding wheels of a great and systematic machine, are easily explained. The new girl catches on. The simple but accurate psychological tests through which she was put before she was accepted for Macy's assure this. She catches on and within a year—perhaps within a space of but a few months—she, herself, is on the reception committee and helping other new girls through the maze of first employment.

The new girl catches on—

There lies before me, as I write these paragraphs, a neatly typewritten loose-leaf memorandum book. It is the work of a girl who has yet to round out her first year in Macy's and it is a work that all must produce before they may hope for very definite advancement.

This typewritten book is, in itself, a book of the Macy store. Its pages are a brief, succinct and thorough account of the store's organization, its selling policies—including, of course, the stressed under-selling policy—and its methods. Yet it is much more, too. It is, if you please, a manual of salesmanship. Under a heading, "Steps in an Ideal Sale," these are not only enumerated but are given relative values in percentages. Thus we see that "attracting attention" is twenty per cent.; "arousing interest," twenty; "creating desire," fifteen; "closing sale," twenty; "introducing new merchandise," ten; and "securing good will," fifteen. Under each of these sub-heads, the salesclerk has collected a group of points necessary to their attainment. Thus, under "attracting attention" one finds "facial expression" and under it, in turn, "pleasant and expectant."

All of these things have been taught the salesgirl author of this book—the volume, itself, is the result of her notes at her lecture classes. When she is taught "attracting attention" she is told that alongside of "facial expression" there comes "tone of voice," and under this last there are five distinct classifications: "audible, distinct, sincere, rhythmical, suited to customer." Truly the science of salesmanship goes to far lengths these days. From time to time the store has engaged a professional teacher of elocution to take up and carry forward this last function of its work. Here is this saleswoman being taught that "swell" is a word forever to be avoided over the counter, "smart," "stylish," "fashionable," "original," and some others being substituted. Similarly "elegant," "grand," "nifty," "classy," "cheap," "awfully" and "terribly" are under the ban, appropriate synonyms being suggested to replace them. "Flat" is not to be used, when "apartment" is meant. The entire list of words to be avoided in a Macy sales conversation runs to a considerable length.

This particular saleswoman was trained to textile salesmanship. Consequently, although the first half of her book, which treats of the store's methods and policies, is common to those that are being prepared by her fellows in all the other selling departments, the second half is the result of the special training that was given her in the department of training along the lines of her own merchandise. Not only did she spend long hours of the firm's time in its classroom upon the third floor of the store and surrounded by cabinets in which were displayed textile materials of every sort and in every stage of development, but she was given a printed booklet which told her much about her merchandise, its history, its production fields and the details of its manufacture.

From it she evolved her own history of textiles, setting down with accuracy the four fundamental cloths—cotton, linen, silk and wool—and not alone tracing their development and manufacture, but by means of carefully hand-made diagrams, pointing out the difference between the different textures and weavings. "Warp" and "weft" and "twill" have come to be more than mere words to her. They are a part of her business capital, which she can—and does—turn to the good account of the store. So she is to her compeer of twenty-five years ago—selling dress-goods in the old Macy store down on Fourteenth Street—as the electric light of today is to the old-fashioned lamps of that day and generation.

Back of this little black-bound notebook there is system—organization if you would read it that way. Education, of a truth, has become the handmaiden of merchandising. And the store's school has become one of its ranking functions.

As teachers in this school there is a specially trained corps of men and women who do nothing but instruct and then follow up their pupils to see that they put into practice the things that they have learned. The educational work consists of individual instruction, informal classes and practical demonstrations. And the result of it all is not merely to make the employee valuable to the house, but to lend interest to merchandising, itself, and to lift the salesperson out of the mere mechanical process of taking orders for goods.

The moment that a new employee comes into the Macy store his or her instruction in its system, organization and salesmanship begins. We have just seen how one typical new saleswoman began receiving her training from the first day of her employment. She was no exception to an inflexible rule. The training is given invariably. It does not matter whether the applicant has had experience in other large department-stores. Even a former Macy employee, accepting re-employment, must go through the department of training for, like everything that grows, the store system changes steadily from year to year and from month to month.

A school such as this must have teachers. It is futile to add that they must be specially trained and thoroughly competent in every way to fulfill the unusual task set before them. And this, of itself, has been a problem, not alone with Macy's, but with the other large department-stores of New York. They have co-operated to solve it, with the direct result that some two or three years ago retail store training became a practical factor in the city's educational system. Under the enthusiastic aid of Doctor Lee Galloway, its head, the successful and rapidly expanding business division of New York University created the school of retail selling, bearing the name of and affiliated with the parent institution. The merchants of New York raised a fund of $100,000 for the establishment and promotion of this enterprise and from it last June came its first graduating class—young men and women qualified to teach store training in the great bazaars of our modern Bagdad.

The purposes of this school are set forth succinctly in its first manual, which has come off the press. Its object is "to dignify retail selling through education in the following ways: To train teachers in retail selling for public high schools and for retail stores, to train employees of retail stores for executive positions and to do special research work for the department managers of retail stores."

In accordance with the first of these expressed avenues of its endeavors the Board of Estimate of the city of New York already has begun to move in full co-operation. A high school in the lower west side of Manhattan—the Haaren High School at Hubert and Collister Streets—has been designated as training center for this work. Girls are there being taught retail selling. Nearly one hundred already are entered in the course and within a few short months the larger stores of the city will begin to benefit by this highly practical educational work.

That this experiment will prove successful seems now to be well beyond the shadows of doubt. Yet such success will be in no small measure due to the individual efforts of Dr. Michael H. Lucey, principal of the Julia Richman High School—in West Thirteenth Street, just back of Macy's original store—who has devoted great energies to its launching. Convinced, from the outset, of the real necessity of a training course in retail selling in the city schools, Dr. Lucey makes no secret of his dubious fears at the beginning of the experiment:

"I honestly didn't see how we were going to do it," he says, in frankly discussing the entire matter, "the tradition in favor of an office career rather than a selling one in a store has so long ruled in the high schools of the city. There are several reasons for this—the most important one, in my mind, the feeling in the average high school girl's head that less education having been required in past years for the girl behind the counter than for the girl behind the typewriter, she lost a certain definite sort of caste, if she followed the first of these callings. Of course, that is utter rubbish. I have no hesitancy today in telling my girls that if they are looking for a genuine career retail selling is the thing for them. In office work, if they are very good, they may get up to forty or even fifty dollars a week but there they are pretty nearly sure to come to a standstill."

The skilled educator shakes his head as he says this.

"You see the difficulty is that so many girls coming out of schools such as these look upon business not as a boy would look at it, as a career with indefinite and permanent possibilities, but rather as a bridge between schooling and matrimony—a bridge of but four, or five, or six years. And when they are frank with me—and they often are—and tell me of this bridge that is in their minds, I am frank to advise office work. It offers better immediate returns—yet in the long run none that are even comparable with those of a high-grade department-store."

Following the successful plan of the University of Cincinnati in its technical engineering courses, the students down at Haaren are grouped into working pairs, which means that, in practice and working in alternation, each goes to school every other week. In the week that one is in the classroom, her partner is in one of the city stores studying retail selling at first hand. When, at the end of six days, she returns to her schoolroom she has many questions derived from her actual practice to put to her instructor. So the practice and the principles of this new hard-headed science are kept hand in hand with its actual workings.

Nor is this all: some six or seven hundred young women—and young men, too—are also making a special study of retail selling in the city's evening schools. A single course at the DeWitt Clinton High School is quite typical of these. Four evenings a week, for two hours each evening, a huge class is being taught—in an even more detailed way than is possible under a department-store roof—the principles and manufacture of textiles. In these classes a goodly number of the Macy family are enrolled. Another goodly enrollment goes into the special lectures given by a museum instructor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on certain evenings and Sunday afternoons.

Truly, indeed, education has become the handmaiden of merchandising.

As teachers in Macy's department of training there are enrolled today only those men and women who have received a thorough normal school education in this great new science of retailing. They do nothing but instruct the store's workers and then follow up to make sure that these are putting into practice the principles in which they have just been instructed. Except for the training of the future executives the school time is taken entirely from regular business hours and so, at the expense of the house, itself. This schooling—under the Macy roof, please remember—consists of individual instruction, informal classes and practical demonstration.

Specialized training under the roof includes instruction under the direct supervision of the Board of Education in fundamental school subjects to those classed as "juniors" and "delinquent seniors"; a junior salesmanship course given to all employees promoted from the non-selling divisions of the store to its selling divisions; a senior salesmanship class—including the study of textiles and non-textiles, and covering three busy months; the instruction of special groups of salesclerks to be transferred for special sales; "demonstration sales," in which teacher and pupil "play store," with the teacher impersonating various types of customers; the executive course to prepare employees for high executive positions of different rank and order; and the specialized instruction for dictaphone and comptometer operators, correspondence and file clerks and the like.

In the limited space of this book, I shall have no opportunity to carry you further into the details of this fascinating department of the modern store. The saleswoman's little black book that we saw but a few minutes ago ought to show it more clearly to your eyes than any elaborate presentments of schedules and curriculums. The result's the thing. And Macy's has the results. It has already achieved them. Not only has it lifted retail selling from the hard and rutty road of cold commercialism but it has lifted the individual seller, himself—which, to my way of thinking, is to be accounted a good deal of a triumph. In such a triumph society at large shares—and shares not a little.

It is house policy—sound policy—to encourage employees to look out not only for the store's interest, but for their own. An ambitious salesman is indeed an asset; and there are ways of keeping him ambitious. There is, for instance, the system of bonuses for punctuality, which takes the final form of extra holidays in the summertime. A week's holiday with pay is given without fail to each and every employee of eight months' standing. But a record of good attendance and punctuality for fifty long weeks brings another week of vacation, also with full pay. Department-stores not so long ago used to penalize their workers for tardiness. The new Macy plan works best, however.

The list of those bonus possibilities is long. There is, of course, chief amongst them, the bonus which takes the concrete form of a sales commission. The salesclerk is set a moderate quota for his or her week's work. On sales that reach above this figure he or she is paid a percentage commission. And, lest you may be tempted to dismiss this statement with a mere shrug of the shoulders, as a perfunctory thing perhaps, permit me to tell you that but last year a retail salesman in the furniture department earned in excess of $6,000 in wages and commissions.

One other thing before we are done with this main chapter on the Macy family and starting up another which shall show the super-household at its play; it is a thing closely associated both with department-store employment and training: this "special squad" which has become so distinctive a feature of the big red-brick selling enterprise in Herald Square. Concretely, it is a group of college graduates—the heads of the firm are themselves college men and have none of the contempt for education that has become so blatant a thing in the minds of so many "self-made business captains" of today—who desire to enter upon this fascinating and comparatively new field of department-store service.

As one of the executives of the department of training himself says, "Many of these young grads come in here with the rattle of their brand-new diplomas so loud in their ears that for quite a while they can't hear anything else."

Yet they are good material—as a rule, uncommonly good material. So Dr. Michael Lucey says, and Dr. Lucey knows. As a supplement to his educational work in the commercial high schools he entered Macy's last summer and spent the two months of his vacation in the special squad, studying the store from a variety of intimate and personal angles. On his first day in it, the distinguished educator sold clothing—men's clothing—and he sold to his first customer, an accomplishment which he notes with no little pride. His pride at the moment was large. But the next moment was destined to take a fall. A floor manager down the aisle espied the new clerk.

"Don't let those trousers sweep the floor," he admonished.

And the educator had his first taste of store discipline.

Sooner or later all these young men out of college get that first taste. It does not harm them. And it is not very long before they begin to observe that, after all, there are still a few things about which they know practically nothing. After which their real education begins.

A department-store is, among other things, a great melting pot. An Englishman who came into Macy's special squad last year inquired just what work might be expected of him. He was told.

"Manual labor," he protested, "I can't think of it. I wear the silver badge."

Which meant that he was one of the King's own—a pensioner of the late war. The store executive who first handled this bit of human raw material possessed a deal of real tact; most of them do. He smiled gently upon the Britisher.

"After all," he suggested, "you know you don't have to tell your King that you had to use your two good hands in hard work."

The Englishman saw the point. He laughed, shook hands and went to work. In six months he was an executive, himself. It's a way that they have at Macy's. And here is part of the way.

Manual labor is demanded invariably of those who enlist in the special squad. It has a regular system through which each of its workers must pass. First he is given the history and development of the store and of its policies. This work is followed by a week on the receiving platform and then a good stiff session in the marking-room. The college boy follows the merchandise along a little further. He proceeds for a while to sell it—then does the work of a section manager. After which there come, in logical sequence, the delivery department, the bureau of investigation, the comptroller's office, the tube system, an intensive study of the departments of employment and of training. These are not only studied but written reports are made upon them. After which he should have a pretty fair idea of the store and the things for which it stands.

The course is only varied in slight detail for the woman college graduate. Macy's has naught but the highest regard for the gentler sex—not alone as its patrons but as members of its staff—yesterday, today and tomorrow. A woman may not be able to handle heavy cases upon the receiving platform. But there are other sorts of cases that she may handle—and frequently with a tact and diplomacy not often shown by the more oppressed sex. I might cite a hundred instances from within the store where she has shown both—and initiative as well. But I shall give only one—where initiative played the largest part. Some few months ago a young woman who has climbed high in the store organization, to the important post of buyer of a most important line of muslin wearing apparel, found herself in France, but a few hours before the steamer upon which she was booked to sail to the United States was to depart from Southampton. To take a steamer across the Channel and then catch her boat was quite out of the question. She did the next best thing. She hopped on an aëroplane and flew from Paris to London; seemingly in almost less time than it here takes to tell it. She caught her boat. Her instructions were to catch the boat. And long since she had acquired the Macy habit of obeying orders.

Upon this, again, a whole volume might be written—upon the thoroughness of an organization which really organizes, a training department that really trains, a system which really systematizes. And all under the title of a family group—in which affection and tact and understanding come into play quite as often as discipline and energy and initiative.

VII. The Family at Play

In the business machine of yesterday there were no adjustments for play. It prided itself upon its efficiency. And in the next breath it proclaimed that such efficiency left no room whatsoever for such foolishness as recreation. Today we know much better. We know that play—healthy, uniform play in a decent amount—is one of the very finest of tonics for the human frame. And so count it as one of the very highest factors in our modern schemes of efficiency.

Macy's plays and makes no secret of the fact. On the contrary, it is intensely proud of its provisions for the welfare of its workers. Industrial recreation is no mere idle phrase to it. In hard fact no small portion of the remarkable esprit de corps of the store is due to its well organized recreational and social service work. In a large measure this part of the operation of the store corresponds to what the War and Navy Departments did through their Commissions on Training Camp Activities during the great war. Bearing in mind our likening Macy's to an army in an earlier chapter, the parallel now becomes a close one indeed. Organized recreation promoted better team work in the war; it now promotes better team work in business. Ergo, it is for the welfare of Macy's that it shall promote organized recreation beneath its own roof.

And yet that very phrase, "welfare work," is not often used underneath that roof. It has the flavor of patronage which is so wholly lacking in this family of thousands, and so it is thrust forever into the discard. "The bunch" gets together—you see, you may call the family by almost any name that pleases you best—various groups are forever assembling at the Men's Club or the Community Club and making plans for their numerous activities. And these last cover a surprisingly large range.

Any male employee of the store may join the Macy Men's Club. It is a wholly self-governing body and, aside from making up the inevitable deficits that accrue, the store has no paternalistic or direct attitude whatsoever toward it. The club itself is situated at 156 West Thirty-fifth Street, just west of the store, but entirely separated from it. It occupies two floors of an extremely comfortable building. In its externals it differs very little from any other sort of men's club. There are a reading room and a smoking room where, toward the close of the day and well into the evening, its members may relax. And there is a restaurant serving extremely good meals.

It is only as one pokes beneath the surface that he begins to find out how very real this small institution, that is an offshoot of the larger one, really is. Its restaurant serves meals at considerably less than cost. And the fact that this club is regarded as something more than a mere combination of eating-place and rest-room is shown by its organization activities in other directions. For example, its members interest themselves in general athletics to the extent that, in the proper seasons, they have very creditable teams of baseball, basketball, football and the like, while occasional outings with suitable field events are arranged. Each Thursday evening there is organized athletic work in a large private gymnasium that is especially hired for the purpose.

In fact it is at this last point that the Men's Club comes in contact with the Community Club, which is the nucleus organization covering other recreational activities among the women, the girls and the younger men of the store family. For, by careful planning, both of these clubs manage to use the big gymnasium of a single evening, while, after the athletic work is over, the floor is cleared and there is dancing until going-home time.

These comforts are not given without some cost to the Macy folk. That would be very bad business indeed. It has been so decided long since. And so, while it may be human nature to be ever on the lookout for "something for nothing," it is quite as human to derive very much additional enjoyment from the things for which one pays. Even the suggestion of charity is not pleasant. And with this in view these clubs charge nominal sums for their privileges. In so doing they earn the respect of those who share in them.

Dues for the Men's Club are placed at three dollars a year—that surely is a nominal figure. These go toward the development of club activities outside of its actual running expenses (rent, the restaurant, etc.). The gymnasium fee is another three dollars, which is much less than one would pay for a similar facility elsewhere in New York.

The scale of charges for the Community Club is quite different. The dues here are but twenty-five cents a year—its membership is made up mainly of lower-salaried folk—with small extra charges for special activities. For instance, the Spanish class, which is taught by one of the Spanish interpreters in the store and which has a constant attendance of about forty, costs its pupils the very inconsiderable sum of five cents a lesson. The gymnasium charge is kept in a like ratio. There are a few others in addition. The aggregate cost, however, of as many activities as an average employee can take up is of little moment or burden to him or to her—nothing as compared with the sense of independence that goes with the small act of payment.

The Choral Club, under the direction of a competent leader, meets Wednesday evenings in the big recreation room on the third floor of the store, with a usual attendance of about two hundred men and women who are trained in part singing and in chorus work of various sorts. This is not only enjoyable and popular for its own sake but it has an added value in leading toward the organizing of the store's talent for concerts and for musical plays.

And it has such talent. Do not forget that—not even for a passing moment. It would be odd, indeed, if a family of five thousand folk did not develop upon demand much real histrionic and artistic ability of every sort. And when such potentialities are fostered and encouraged, the results—well, they are such as to warn Florenz Ziegfeld and the rest of the Forty-second Street theatrical producers to keep a sharp eye, indeed, upon Macy's.

On Monday evenings, the entire winter long and well into the spring, the Dramatic Club meets and here every budding Maxine Elliott or Ina Claire has her full opportunity. On Tuesday there is a get-together evening—one begins to think with all these evenings so neatly filled of the calendar of a real social enterprise—and then one sees the store family at its fullest relaxation. Here was a recent Tuesday night. It was just before Christmas and the store was approaching the annual peak load of its year's traffic. Yet it had no intention whatsoever of relaxing a single one of its social endeavors.

On this particular Tuesday evening our salesgirl—the one whom we saw but a moment ago being inducted into the selling organism of the store—made her first personal acquaintance with the Community Club. Let her tell her own story, and in her own way:

"Up in the recreation room a few hundred of us gathered for a regular party. Some few of us had gone home after store hours for our dinner; the others had had it right in the store's own lunchroom. It surely is great the way that you can get a meal there in Macy's at any time you are staying late—either on duty or on pleasure.

"At about six-thirty the evening's program got under way—so that the many friendly, chattering groups of girls in the big room finally had to simmer down to something approaching silence. Then the Choral Club began singing for us—some good, old-time Christmas carols first, and then some other songs. All of us joined finally in the chorus, leaving the club to carry the difficult parts. They could do that all right, too. Mr. Janpolski, their leader, finally gave us a solo and after that there was a grand march led by our own beloved Marjorie Sidney. Everybody joined in—not only in body, but in spirit. It was like Washington's Birthday in the big gym up at Northampton. Messenger girls, college graduates, salesfolk, deliverymen, managers—everyone was just the same in that blessèd hour. Distinctions of the store were gone. We were boys and girls—some of us a bit grown up and grayed to be sure, but all with Peter Pannish hearts—having a real party once again.

"The grand march ended in dancing for every one—with a jolly negro at the piano doing his level best to uphold the reputation of his race for really spontaneous music. Finally, after many encore dances, everybody withdrew from the floor and out came Mr. Salek, the director of the Men's Club, and Miss Knowles, doing an almost professional dance. The Castles had very little on this couple—the way Salek lifted his partner and then let her down—slowly, slowly, still more slowly—reminded me of Maurice and Walton. Their performance brought down the house. Of course they had to respond to encores; again and again and again.

"Following this—for Macy's believes that variety is the spice of all life—a Junior recited the unforgetable ''Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house.' She really was a darling. And how Christmassy she looked, with her big butterfly sash and her hairbow of scarlet tulle.... Next on the program came dancing—for everybody. First, however, there was another march, so that each couple received a number—while every little while certain numbers (the couples that held them) were eliminated from the floor. The nicest part about this elimination dance, as they called it, was that instead of only the last couple getting the prize, as is generally done—every couple, as soon as its number was called and it left the floor, went over to a big chimney-top, with a proverbially jolly 'Santa' peering out of it. There Santa gave to each one a little gift, such as a whistle, a stick of candy, or a jolly little rattle. Then, after more dancing, refreshments were served by gaily garbed Junior waitresses. After which the dancing continued until the merry Community Club Christmas dance was entirely over."

Already I have touched upon the annual vacation of the Macy worker—one week with pay after eight months continuous employment, two weeks after two years, three weeks after five years, and a month after twenty-five years of service. A charming retreat among the hills of Sullivan County, eighty-seven miles from New York and, through the foresight of the management of the store, purchased long ago, provides an ideal vacation spot for the Macy girls who wish to spend their holidays among truly rural surroundings. For this purpose a large farm house and a hundred acres of surrounding land were acquired by Macy's and more than fifty thousand dollars spent in enlarging the house, beautifying the grounds and otherwise making them suitable for their summertime uses. In addition to the big and immaculately white farm house there are three cottages upon the property. As many as sixty-five girls can be accommodated at a single time upon it.

Three jumps or so from the main house and stretched out in front of it is a lake; a regular lake, if you please, big enough for boating and for bathing, although not so large that one of the keen-eyed chaperones may keep her weather eye on those of her charges whose tastes run toward water sports. In this Adamless Eden bloomers and middy blouses are de rigueur, and as the few restraints imposed are only those inspired by ordinary good sense, the girls experience the real joys of living.

All of these activities and interests—and many, many more besides—are faithfully chronicled in the Macy house organ, Sparks. Here is a monthly magazine—of some sixteen pages, each measuring seven by ten inches—that in appearance alone would grace any newsstand, while its contents almost invariably bear out the attractiveness of its cover designs. Practically the entire publication is prepared by its staff, which, in turn, is composed of members of the Macy family.

House organs, such as this, are, of course, no novelty in the American business world of today. There probably are not less than fifty department-stores alone which are now printing brisk contemporaries of Sparks. The internal publications of a house, such as Macy's, have long since come to be recognized as one of its most valuable media for the promotion of morale. It costs money, but it is money well expended. So says modern business. And modern business ought to know. For it has tested the results. And the house organ long since became one of the really valuable aides.

Here, then, in Sparks is not only a medium in which the Macy folks may come the better to know about one another, a bulletin board upon which the heads of the house may from time to time carry very direct and sincere messages to their big family, but a mouthpiece in which the embryo literary genius may become articulate. And, lest you be tempted to believe that I have permitted simile to carry me quite away from fact, let me show you a single instance—there are a number of others beside—in which a real literary genius has come to bloom underneath the great roof that looks down upon Herald Square:

His pen name is Francis Carlin—but his real name, the one under which he entered Macy's, is James Francis Carlin MacDonnell. Of him Current Opinion but a year or two ago said: "The writer (Carlin) ... was until a few weeks ago a floorwalker in one of the big department-stores of New York City (Macy's) and was discovered by Padraic Colum. He had his book obscurely printed and it has been unobtainable at bookstores until recently.... It has the true Celtic quality. The dedication alone is worth the price of admission: 'It is here that the book begins and it is here, that a prayer is asked for the soul of the scribe who wrote it for the glory of God, the honor of Erin and the pleasure of the woman who came from both—his mother.'"

Mr. MacDonnell has written two books: this first, My Ireland, and more recently the Cairn of Stones. That he has great talent is again attested by The Boston Transcript which said recently: "Mr. Carlin's Celtic poems, ballads and lyrics are nearer the fine perfection of the native poets belonging to the Celtic renaissance than those produced by any poet of Irish blood born in America."

After which, who may now dare say that genius may not blossom in a department-store? And even were it not for the gaining glory of Carlin, the pages of any current issue of Sparks would show that there is more than a deal of artistic merit in the widespread ranks of the Macy family. The desire for self-expression is never stunted. And the pages of its avenue of expression are read by none more closely than the members of the family who hold the ownership of Macy's.

And yet these men—the heads of the great merchandising house—are not only accessible to their business family through the printed word. They are not standoffish. On the contrary, they are most widely known throughout the store; most reachable, both within their offices and without. Take the single matter of grievances, for a most important instance: A Macy worker may feel that justice on some point or other is being denied him by a superior. In such a case he has immediate recourse to any one of three expedients: he may take his case to the department of training, to the general manager of the store, or to one of the officers of the corporation. As a rule, however, the difficulty can be straightened out in the first of these avenues of appeal, which is an automatic clearing-house for all matters of personnel. The heads of this department have been chosen as much as anything for the sympathy which enables them to review any employee's case intelligently and fairly and for the influence that makes it possible for them to see at all times that full justice is being done. While the fact that the worker, himself, may take the matter to the general manager or even to one of the three members of the firm, is a practical guarantee against persecution of any sort.