USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 25
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An examination of present-day copy in comparison with that of the early years of this epoch reveals many improvements in advertising technique, par- ticularly in illustration and composition. No less significant is the growth of sentiment favoring higher standards in accuracy of statement and honesty of presentation, one of the most commendable as well as one of the most pro- ductive developments in present-day advertising.
PUBLIC SERVICE AND CONVENIENCE
To one whose memory can travel back to the beginning of the period under consideration the changes that have come in the physical set-up alone of our modern department stores are most impressive. The Boston woman who went shopping in the 1880's would perhaps reach the retail district by riding on the horse cars. Entering one of the large stores she would obtain a ka- leidoscopic impression made up of various details, including, in addition to the crowds of people, long aisles dotted with stools which had revolving seats for customers and were ranged in front of counters behind which the clerks were mostly men. If the customer displayed sufficient interest, the clerks were prepared to pull down piece goods or other merchandise from the wall racks behind them for her inspection. Overhead were gas fixtures for lighting and a network of wires for one or more carrier systems. Young messenger boys were wandering through the aisles, while clerks here and there were having their difficulty in getting any response to their somewhat strident calls of "Cash, cash liere."
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By way of contrast the woman of today who goes to the same district for her shopping will possibly alight at a subway station beneath the store where her purchases are to be made. Without perhaps any conscious com- parison on her part she will nevertheless be aware of the well-lighted premises from the many electric fixtures, sometimes of the direct, sometimes of the indirect type. The old wooden floors have in many cases been replaced with marble or composition; there has been a large investment in elaborate fixtures, . artificially illuminated cases, and mahogany or other appropriate backgrounds. Vast quantities of goods in great variety are on display either along the counters or on tables, where they are readily accessible to all. This method of freely exposing the merchandise to public view is a concession to the psychology of the average purchaser, who has abundantly demonstrated a desire not only to see but to handle the merchandise wanted. Furthermore, experience has shown that displayed articles which can be readily inspected will often sell themselves, so to speak, whereas they would move but slowly if left on the shelves until customers asked to see them.
To the customer who can recall the early department stores still other contrasts are to be noted in the modern store. Most of the clerks behind the counters now are girls and one observes that all are dressed in conformity to regulations which preserve approximate uniformity of color and a standard- ized simplicity of design. The wire carrier systems have disappeared, as have the messenger boys, and in their places are numerous cash registers and pneu- matic tubes. The interior of the great store of today has an appearance of larger spaciousness notwithstanding the greater diversity of departments and the increased variety as well as volume of merchandise.
STORE MANAGEMENT
Notable as these changes are even to the superficial observer, still more vital and significant developments are to be found in the evolution of department store management, particularly as revealed in merchandising, sales promotion and personnel relations.
The present high development of merchandising in department stores has been the result of the scientific application of the principles which have been gradually evolved, chiefly during the present century. Every large store endeavors to secure expert buyers on whose judgment as to style, quality and price the management can depend with confidence; but their buying is more or less arbitrarily controlled in the interest of safety. Budgets are de- termined in advance in order to avoid the dangers of heavy accumulations of stock with the usual calamitous mark-downs. Furthermore, many organ- izations now have the benefit of statistical data tabulated from their sales, a practice which makes possible a unit stock control system whereby their new purchases can be more or less scientifically directed in accordance with their actual sales experience and their probable future needs. It is now customary for most department stores and for many specialty shops to belong to co-oper- ative groups or buying organizations in which individual and collective ex- periences are pooled for the benefit of all the members. It is generally admitted that this exchange of store figures and operating statistics is mutually beneficial;
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but there is less general agreement as to the merits of group buying. While there are undoubtedly some economies due to the plaeing of large orders, many buyers find it difficult to aceept the opinions of others regarding styles and patterns and therefore hesitate to grant the authority to a general buying organization. It is not surprising that eo-operative efforts of this kind have led in many instanees to still closer bonds of union, resulting in chains of de- partinent stores and mergers of large store interests. This development has been especially noticeable within the last deeade.
As previously indieated, the most powerful contributing factor for sales promotion in department stores is their advertising, especially that plaeed in the daily and Sunday newspapers. The writing of attractive copy and the designing of appropriate illustrative matter to aecompany it are today the produet of highly trained experts, who in addition to some knowledge of merehandise are expected to bring to their task a specialized facility in handling the technique of advertising.
THE APPEAL OF STYLE
It has been interesting to observe how the emphasis on different faetors in the appeal for publie interest has been shifted in recent years. Whereas it had long been eustomary to call attention chiefly to either the quality or the price of the merchandise, it is now evident that style has been given primary consideration in mueh, if not most, of this advertising. The growing general interest in sports of all kinds, which has been one of the results of shorter work- ing hours and a consequent inerease in the available leisure time enjoyed by a considerable portion of the people, has naturally brought about an inereased demand for sports wear in which style has had a powerful influenee. This influenee has been further extended by the efforts of professional stylists, trade. eonferenees and trade journals. In the rotogravure supplements of the news- papers photographic illustration, with its direet appeal to the eye of the eon- sumer, has been utilized with notable sueeess by many advertisers during the last fifteen years. In addition to the newspapers some stores have made use of private mailing lists for oceasional eirculars featuring seleeted items or for the announcement of special sales. A few of the larger stores, especially in New York, have also sought national publieity in some of the magazines.
Closely allied to the publieity gained through the press is that which comes from effective window display, which again ealls for the abilities of specialists in this particular field. A very considerable amount of study has been devoted to problems of window decoration, especially during the last deeade. Perhaps the most notable single contribution in this direetion has been the endeavor to provide interesting baekgrounds. Many of these have shown a rather striking tendeney to reflect the influenees eurrent in modernistie art and decoration. One observes also that many of the aeeessories utilized in window display, such as the figure forms, wrought-iron standards and other mobile fixtures, are conceived and executed in sympathetic relationship with these present-day influences. This tendency, whatever its contribution may be to permanent or ephemeral values, is obviously another eoneession to the insistent demand for style.
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As a result of these intensive methods of sales promotion, combined with skillful management in general, the volume of sales in a few of the largest stores of the country has now passed the hundred million dollar mark annually.
PERSONNEL RELATIONS
Department store managers of the early part of the period under con- sideration gave little thought to the problems of personnel relations as they are understood today. There had been as yet but little research in this field, to which in recent years so much study and experiment have been directed. The specialized education of employees had begun to receive some attention by the beginning of the second decade of the present century; and from about 1917 onward many of the larger stores had come to feel the need for more extensively developed personnel departments, devoted to the vocational selec- tion and assignment of employees, detailed records of their history and progress, and a co-ordination of data relating to their special abilities or defects, health and character. The humanitarian interest of the management lias often been manifested by the extent to which the directors have encouraged and sup- ported educational classes, thrift plans, mutual benefit societies, health clinics and other enterprises promoted for the general welfare of their working forces. Many stores have introduced various schedules for measured compensation, bonuses or other forms of reward, intended to stimulate individual or depart- mental incentive in the interest of larger productivity for the organization as a whole. Some of the Boston stores, notably Filene's and Jordan Marsh Company, have taken a leading part in the development of these important departments.
THE RETAIL DISTRICT
Notwithstanding the many vicissitudes affecting the retail business in Boston during the last half-century, it is significant that for the most part the confines of the retail district are still practically the same as they were in 1880. This is in marked contrast to the radical changes that have occurred in some large cities, as, for example, the pronounced uptown trend which has been such a surprising development in New York. The central retail district in Boston is a very compact area, extending northerly along Washington and Tremont streets from Boylston approximately to School street and including the thoroughfares that run transversely, principally West street, Temple place, Winter and Bromfield streets. This area includes most of the larger department stores and many smaller stores. It is true there has been some extension of the retail shopping district east and west, notably on Summer street, where there are stores of various sizes, comprising department stores, conspicuously located at the western end, and between that point and the South Station numerous smaller enterprises devoted to the sale of clothing, jewelry, hardware, market produce and fruit; and also on Boylston street, where some specialty shops, jewelers, opticians, footwear stores, and others of similar character have met the somewhat precarious demand for retail service in this section during the last quarter century. This field is now being gradually further extended by more recent ventures into Newbury street, the Park Square Building and the neighborhood of the Statler Hotel. Among the more important
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stores in this section are those of the Paine Furniture Company, the largest enterprise of its kind in New England, and the jewelry concern of Shreve, Crump and Low, which traces its origin back as far as the year 1800.
The restriction of so much of the retail business activity within such a limited area in the heart of the city's business district has its advantages for the shopper, who can walk readily from store to store with a minimum loss of time; but it also has some disadvantages, due to the inevitable congestion of pedestrian and vehicular traffic which such a busy and at the same time such a restricted area obviously produces.
TRAFFIC CONGESTION
When the Park Street Subway was opened in 1897 not only were thousands of people brought more conveniently within easy access of the shopping district but the surface congestion was also relieved by the removal of the cars and tracks on Tremont street from Boylston street north. Traffic conditions were still further improved on Tremont street when part of the sidewalk on the Common side was removed in 1920, thus effectively widening this important thoroughfare, where a number of the city's finest specialty shops and large stores are located. As time went on, however, new difficulties arose. Not only did the pedestrian traffic increase with the increase in population and improved transit facilities but the gradual growth in the number of automobiles brought a new factor into the problem which called for still further relief meas- ures, many of which are yet to be supplied. In 1923 the surface cars were taken off Washington, Summer and the easterly end of Boylston streets, adding greatly to the freedom of movement through these busy arteries of trade. Notwithstanding these improvements, congestion in the downtown streets, due chiefly to the steadily increasing automobile traffic, is a constantly pressing and difficult problem. The stores wish to keep the patronage of customers who arrive by automobile, but many such customers are deterred from approaching because of the number of other cars or trucks parked along the curbs or else moving so slowly in the traffic stream. The adoption of electric signal lights has helped the situation to some extent recently and the elaborate studies of the City Planning Board, published in 1930, present several important projects calculated to provide further relief, if adopted, not only for this central area but for the city as a whole.
MERGERS
Some rather significant changes have been noted in the realignment of some of the great Boston stores. For example, the Filene store was moved into its present imposing building in the autumn of 1912. Although this meant only passing from one corner of the street to that diagonally opposite, it has proved to be one of the most significant developments in the history of Boston's retail trade. The new store, with its greater space and improved facilities, greatly enlarged the company's sphere of operation and distribution. Since that time the store has been gradually further increased in size by the
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absorption of adjoining buildings until it now covers the entire block bounded by Washington, Summer, Franklin and Hawley streets. In 1929 the R. H. White Company, one of the oldest and one of the most successful of Boston's department stores, was absorbed by Filene's. As further exemplifying the modern tendency toward combinations, Filene's in turn has become affiliated with the Federated Department Stores, Inc., in which it is the largest unit, the others being, in the order of their sales volume, Abraham and Straus of Brooklyn, Bloomingdale Brothers of New York, and F. and R. Lazarus and Sons of Columbus. This group in 1930 had net sales of more than $113,000, 000, to which Filene's contributed over $45,000,000. To the Filene Company also belongs the credit of operating one of the most successful basement departments in the country.
When in 1926 the Jordan Marsh Company celebrated its diamond jubilee, the event was marked by the display of an exhaustive collection of historical material which for many weeks supplied window exhibits of a most absorbing character for the benefit of thousands of interested spectators. Their seventy- fifth anniversary sales which were staged in connection with this event attracted great numbers to the store. In the previous year the well-known concern of C. F. Hovey and Company, long famous for the quality of its merchandise, its conservative policies and its select clientele, was merged with Jordan's, thus appreciably increasing the interests and the scope of the larger company. Still further expansion was achieved when in 1929 Jordan's became the largest unit in the Hahn Department Stores, Inc. In 1930 this group had a total volume of net sales amounting to more than $104, 000,000.
Among the Boston stores of long standing the Gilchrist Company and the Shepard Stores, which are centrally located in the district, have earned a reputation for quality and service in their miscellaneous lines of merchandise. Conrad and Company on Winter street have also won public favor in supplying the demand for their somewhat more specialized lines. On Tremont street are numerous specialty shops and some few whose scope is sufficiently broad to place them in the department store classification, even though their mer- chandise is almost exclusively restricted to the needs of women and children. The R. H. Stearns Company has long enjoyed a reputation for quality mer- chandise and select patronage. Chandler and Company, whose premises have been enlarged and improved in recent years, and the E. T. Slattery Company have successfully emphasized style merchandise. Nearby is the establishment of C. Crawford Hollidge, whose windows also display the current novelties. These stores enjoy the benefit of one of the most attractive and strategic locations in the city.
THE CHAIN STORE
Although the principles involved in the operation of a chain of widely scattered units, controlled through a centralized management, were more or less understood and applied as far back as the Middle Ages, the chain store system as we know it today has been essentially an American development of the last seventy years. Most of the progress in this development has taken
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place within the present century and the rate of expansion has been particularly marked in the period since the close of the World War. It is obvious that many economies are to be expected in the operation of a chain unit as compared with an independent store. Buying in large quantities means lower costs for the merchandise. Goods are sold for cash, which eliminates bad debts and interest charges. Carefully selected stocks, limited to the items in greatest popular demand, ensure the greatest rapidity of turnover with a minimum of mark- downs, thus strengthening profits. There are as a rule no expensive delivery charges, the goods being sold on the "cash and carry" basis. With these advantages it is not surprising that on many items the chains have been able to undersell the independent stores. In a trial census which was made of eleven representative cities (Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Fargo, Kansas City, Providence, San Francisco, Seattle, Springfield, Illinois, and Syracuse) in 1927 it was revealed that the chain stores, representing fifteen per cent of the total number of retail stores, did more than twenty-eight per cent of the total volume of business. In the entire country it is now estimated that approxi- mately twenty per cent of the retail volume is done by the chain stores. In the same year the Chain Store Research Bureau, W. J. Baxter, director, esti- mated that there were about 4,000 chain groups in business, operating a total of more than 100,000 retail units. Two-thirds of these were groceries. The next largest in number were the five and ten cent to one dollar stores. Shoe stores were in third place and the drug stores fourth.
The largest of the chain groups, the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Com- pany, is also the oldest, having been founded in 1858. With its 19,000 to 20,000 stores it has already passed the $1,000,000,000 mark in its total volume of sales.
The F. W. Woolworth Company, the oldest of the five and ten cent stores, was established in 1879. In the year of its fiftieth anniversary, 1929, its 2,100 stores sold more than $300,000,000 worth of merchandise. This company is planning to include twenty cent lines of merchandise to supplement its five and ten cent schedule.
Boston has played its conspicuous part in the history of chain store enter- prises. One of the most successful large grocery chains, the First National Stores, Inc., represents a combination of earlier Boston groups, namely, the Ginter Company, established in 1895, O'Keeffe's, Inc., dating from 1897, and the John T. Connor Company, from 1899. The stores of this combination, which number more than 2,550 scattered through New England, had reached an aggre- gate sales volume of approximately $65,000,000 in 1928.
Another large organization which traces its origin back to Boston is that of Drug, Inc., which controls the United Drug Company, founded in 1902, the Vick Chemical Company, absorbed in 1930, Liggett's Drug Stores and the Boots Drug Stores of England, which together make the largest drug chain in the world.
The W. T. Grant Company, which has made notable progress among store groups dealing in merchandise to sell for 25 cents to $1, established its first store in Lynn in 1906. By 1925 the number of stores had increased to seventy- seven, with average sales per store of $394,000. Since that year the company
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has at least tripled its total number of stores, with a steady increase in profits, although, as might be expected at this rate of expansion, there has been some falling off in average sales per store.
Many other chain groups are more or less represented in Boston or its immediate neighborhood, as, for example, S. S. Kresge and Company, J. C. Penney Company, Neisner Brothers, Mclellan Stores, United Cigar Stores and the Schulte Stores.
OPPOSITION TO THE CHAINS
Notwithstanding the phenomenal advances made by the chains, especially in the last dozen years, their path of progress has not been entirely without its serious obstacles and some considerable opposition. There are certain difficulties which appear to be inherent in the very nature of their business. For example, it has thus far been almost impossible for the chains to enter the field of style merchandise. They are not equipped for it and their interests have no doubt been best served by concentration on staples. Furthermore, the nature of their organization and control is such as to incur the hostility of a considerable section of the public. Bankers and others realize that most of their earnings do not remain in the community where they are earned but are sent away to absentee owners. Their insurance, fixtures, repairs and miscellaneous purchases are usually obtained through headquarters far away rather than through local agencies, a sort of alien preference policy which naturally arouses some local antagonism. The independent dealers, who feel their competition most keenly, perhaps cannot be blamed for their unfriendly attitude toward such powerful rivals. Under the circumstances it is not sur- prising that various attempts have been made to curb the activity and the competition of the chains. Not, however, until the decision of the Supreme Court in 1931, sustaining the constitutionality of the taxation of chain stores by the State of Indiana, has there been any real accomplishment in this direc- tion. Other tax schemes are pending in other states and with the above prec- edent it is probable that still more will be attempted. The probability is that the chains, while prepared to fight any unjust discriminatory legislation, will not seriously object to reasonable taxation measures.
MAIL ORDER HOUSES
In the field of retail distribution the mail order companies deserve recog- nition for their very large measure of accomplishment. Conditions in this country have been well adapted for this business. Its early appeal was largely to people in somewhat remote districts, to agricultural populations and others who found it inconvenient to reach the towns and cities for their purchases. Our well-developed post office system, with its highly efficient rural delivery and parcel post, has been of the greatest importance in the suc- cessful extension of this enterprise.
Montgomery Ward was the pioneer in the mail order business, starting in a simple way in Chicago in 1872. His single leaflets grew gradually to circulars and ultimately into the catalogues which have come to be such an
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essential part of the mail order scheme. By intensive studies of consumer demands, truthful advertising, expert buying, fair values and reasonable guar- antees of satisfaction a large business was built up, with sales steadily increas- ing until in 1920 they had passed the $100,000,000 mark. With a break in the two years following, due to the depression of 1921, they have continued to mount steadily until by 1928 they were in excess of $214,000,000. It must be observed, however, that this figure was not entirely due to mail orders. With the extension of the good roads movement and the great increase in the number of automobiles many of their former customers were finding it possible to get into the towns to satisfy their needs, perhaps at the chain stores. Real- izing this situation, Montgomery Ward and other mail order houses have felt the need for taking additional measures in order not only to maintain but to increase their sales volume. It is for this reason that they have recently entered the chain store and department store fields.
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