USA > New Mexico > Men of our day; or, biographical sketches of patriots, orators, statemen, generals, reformers, financiers and merchants, now on the stage of action > Part 49
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"They'll have me in the concert saloon business next." Laughing again, probably at the curious figure he would cut in that avocation, "The truth is, I intend only to enlarge the facilities for retail trade at the upper store, and group together
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those departments which should be properly associated, and which are now scattered on two floors, and cause a great deal of running up and down stairs. Here is the Yankee notion stock; we have no room for it here, and it ought to be moved up to the other store. I am urged to do this constantly, but hesitate only for one reason. The moment we throw open that department to the retail trade, a great many smaller dealers in the vicinity will suffer. The advantages we possess are so superior that competition of small dealers is out of the ques- tion, and the moment they feel the pressure they cry out against monopoly, and attribute all kinds of vindictiveness to the firm. But, after all, the public at large are benefitted. We are enabled to offer them the largest stock at the smallest cost, with all the guarantees that are inseparable from a responsible house, whose name and honor are part of the business. This seems to be the great advantage of the tendency to aggregate business interests of a kindred nature. It cheapens manufacture, and capital becomes a vehicle between the petty producer and the consumer. Aside from the fact that the system economizes power, it should be remembered that it is better calculated to foster native industry in many cases. Take, for instance, the Ameri- can beaver cloths, made for this house expressly by the Utica Steam Mills. They are now conceded to be equal to any made anywhere, and lying side by side with imported goods, suffer no depreciation. They are perfecting the manufacture so rapidly in cassimeres and similar goods, under proper stimulation, that already the demand for American manufacture exceeds the foreign. It is absurd to suppose, as is generally the case, that the increasing facilities and demands of a great business in New York, or anywhere, in fact, must be associated with rivalry or greed; generally the magnitude of the business swallows up all such considerations; in fact the growth and extension are not
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the subject of special endeavor, but are the inevitable conse- quince of a healthy organization. Any business beyond a certain point becomes germinal, and grows in all directions. The greatest care has to be exercised in its training and prun- ing. People come to me and ask me for my secret of success ; why, I have no secret, I tell them. My business has been a matter of principle from the start. That's all there is about it. If the golden rule can be incorporated into purely mercantile affairs it has been done in this establishment, and you must have noticed, if you have observed closely, that the customers are treated precisely as the seller himself would like to be treated were he in their place. That is to say, nothing is misrepresented, the price is fixed, once and for all, at the lowest possible figure, and the circumstances of the buyer are not suffered to influence the salesman in his conduct in the smallest particular. I think you will find the same principle of justice throughout the larger transactions of the house, and especially in its dealings with employees. I do not speak of it as deserv- ing of praise-we find it absolutely necessary. What we cannot afford is violation of principle."
Here Mr. Stewart has given his whole theory of business. To another gentleman, who said to him one morning-" Mr. Stewart, you are a very rich man, why do you bother yourself building this immense place ?"
Said Mr. Stewart : " That is the very question I asked myself this morning, when I took a look at that big hole in the ground. The worst of it is," he continued, without giving a complete reply, and with a regretful tone, as if the thing must be done, and yet cause him sorrow, " my neighbors don't like it."
The stories of Mr. Stewart's competition with other houses, large or small, are all mythical. There is room enough for all, in his opinion, and we may say, that in our opinion, when an-
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other man comes along with the qualifications of a Stewart, he will acquire the fortune of a Stewart.
" The star of your fate is in your own breast," says the Ger- man poet.
Mr. Stewart is, of course, the recipient of a vast number of applications for every kind and form of charity. To deserving objects, his liberality is large and enduring-but he fights the many swindles and dribbles that eat away weaker men's for- tunes without helping the receiver, with a keenness and warmth that is acquainted with the tricks and manners of the begging tribe. Many old merchants of New York, who have failed in business, have had their declining years made easy by the kind- ness of Mr. Stewart, but he is as reticent of these deeds as he is of every thing that tends to personal praise. The large way in which he prefers to do things, is evidenced in his conduct during the last season of great distress in Ireland, during our war, when he bought a ship, loaded her with stores, shipped them to Bel- fast, his native town, and brought over in return, a ship load of young men and women, free of cost, to the land of hope- America.
As to his views on politics, Mr. Stewart has attempted, as far as he has been active at all, to get public affairs out of the hands of professional politicians, into those of men who will do the public business on the same principles upon which private business is done. This will be the case some day, but Mr. Stewart will not see it. He is the strong and active friend of General Grant as a candidate for the presidency, and was one of the large contributors to the present of one hundred thou- sand dollars, made him by the merchants of New York city, as an acknowledgment of his great services in the overthrow of the Rebellion.
Mr. Stewart is a man of progress-of the modern time-he
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is a man for improvement and enjoyment. When he builds, he does it with iron, and plenty of glass-fire proof-with abun- dant light-the structure perfectly adapted to all its purposes, and securing the comfort of all within-no gothic dimness, or Grecian anachronism in architecture, has a chance with him. When he builds a house for another-as his marble palace in Fifth Avenue-to use his own words, " a little attention to Mrs. Stewart"-it is a different matter. That is to please her.
Mr. Stewart is about sixty-four years of age, but looks good for twenty more. His eyes twinkle, as blue eyes often do, with the coming light of a frequent good thing. He has a merry turn of mind, and enjoys himself in a little party with young folks, equal to any of his juniors, and can make fun, and take fun, equal to any.
The operations of the house of A. T. Stewart & Co., are liter- ally world wide. Mr. William Libby, in New York, Mr. Francis Warden, permanently in Paris, and Mr. G. Fox, in Manchester, England, compose the firm. It has three foreign bureaus, or depots-one on a triangular square at Cooper street, Manchester, where are collected, examined, and packed, all English goods. One at Belfast, for linens, which partakes of the nature of a factory as well, the linens being bought in the rough, and afterward bleached and fitted for the trade. This establishment is about the size of a double New York store, that is fifty by one hundred feet. In Glasgow, the firm have a house exclusively for Scotch goods. In Paris, the magazin, on the Rue Bergere, has been known to continental manufacturers for many years. Here are collected and arranged, for shipping to America, all East Indian, French and German goods, exclu- sive of woolens. In Berlin is the woolen-house, equal in size to three ordinary New York stores. There are also, at Lyons, two large warehouses for silk goods. All the continental busi-
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ness is transacted at the Paris bureau, payments are made there, and a general supervision extended over the other establish- ments. In addition to these, it must be remembered that there are a number of manufacturers who do work exclusively for this firm, and are really branches of the business. For instance, they have the house of Alexandre, in Paris, constantly manu- facturing kid gloves for Stewart & Co., exclusively, while in this country and Great Britain, mills run all the year round to supply the New York house with goods. One such customer taxes all their powers.
Then there are buyers, one for each of the fifteen departments in this house, who are constantly travelling somewhere between Hong Kong and Chili, and who are in a measure responsible for the condition of those departments at home. Special agents, too, on important embassies of a confidential nature, putting up in Thibet, or Brussels, or found on the Ganges, or among the Chinese cocoons. In fact, the cosmopolitan part of the house, the circulating human capital, must be formidable in numbers and diplomacy if ever assembled. And they were as- sembled once, we believe, at Manchester. A rumor had got abroad in Europe, that Mr. Stewart had died. To correct it, and accomplish some important movement, Mr. Stewart telegraphed extensively over the hemisphere for his ministers to meet him in Manchester, on a certain day, and there is a legend in that place of a mysterious congress having been held there, though public opinion was for a long time divided as to whether they were Orsini sympathizers, or Yankee invaders.
In 1863, Mr. Stewart returned an income of $1,900,000- in 1864, one of $4,000,000, in 1865, of $1,600,000, and for 1866, of $600,000-an average of very near $2,000,000 per year. Whether this rate of profit can be kept up is a question, but it is probable that the average will be increased instead of di
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minished. Mr. Stewart is a large holder of real estate, and among his many designs is one for building model houses for people of small, or moderate incomes. The plans for this pur- pose are silently but steadily progressing. It is understood to be Mr. Stewart's intention to expend about five millions of dol- lars in this noble and philanthropic enterprise.
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