Cultivation of good manners, neatness, elevated personal habits, the general requirements of the store service, lessons from their individual experiences, etc., are considered with them individually and at general meetings, and are emphasized by a system of monthly averages bearing upon questions of promotion and increase of salary. To illustrate: Each of the smaller boys (the cash boys) has his record card which he must carry for a month. It is no small departure from small-boy nature, simply to have and hold this card during a month without a forbidden accumulation of dirt and damage upon it. One of the early signs of progress, after the adoption of this feature of our plan, was an increased average whiteness and remaining area in the cards surrendered at the month’s end. This card epitomizes the boy’s early business life and he reverences it and guards it. On one side are rules to be committed to memory, but this is merely incidental. The other is the serious side, where an array of spaces gradually fill up, like the rising of the tide. Weekly ratings by his section manager for neatness, promptness, truthfulness, etc.; a weekly rating at morning “inspection,” by his general chief; daily strokes of the pencil (if occasion require) for misconduct or neglect of duty—“bluies” the boys call these latter marks and there is no levity or disrespect in the term. Protest against what is felt to be an undeserved “bluie” is made to his chief, or even to the general manager, with all the earnestness of an appeal to the Supreme Court, and, needless to say, such appeals are patiently entertained and decided with honest effort after justice. Upon these cards, also, are entered the monthly figures given for the boys’ school-work. The average of all the ratings is the “store average” and the misconduct marks (“bluies”) reckon so much off. The card goes home for inspection and signing by parent or guardian. Upon the “store average” depend increase of salary and promotion. If advance in salary is not won reasonably soon (six weeks or two months usually bring the first upward step) the conclusion is apt to be reached that the boy is unfitted for our service and he is dropped from the ranks. The simple expedient of these cards, and that which they represent, secures in discipline what the harsh word and impulsive discharge never could secure, and a month or two bring about in the little “raw recruit” a surprising improvement.
I mention these details as illustrative of the spirit, character and thoroughness with which, to the best of our ability, the problems of the discipline and development of our young people are met, along their whole course from first entrance into the business up to graduation into the ranks of men and women. And this line of procedure is simple recognition of the fact that these are children still, whose characters are forming, and that faults and defects, which in man or woman might require discharge, in the child simply demand correction.
The boys above the cash boy grade, and the girls, are placed, as early as wisely possible (depending upon their own developing tendencies and the business conditions), where some distinct branch of the business, or class of merchandise, will be learned thoroughly. Stock boy, salesman, stock-head, buyer’s assistant, is the usual line of advancement in merchandising. Development in clerical lines makes the bookkeeper, the auditor, the office assistant, the stenographer. In trades lines grow up among us, the milliner, the dressmaker, the paper shade and flower worker, the plate engraver and printer, the designer, draughtsman, decorator, show-card painter, the mechanic in repair of bicycles, dolls, and so on. Exceedingly numerous and varied are the paths open, and in so far as possible an early and definite selection and patient reasonable progress along some one of these paths are insisted upon. Meanwhile salaries are advanced systematically according to a minimum scale which is increased as progress above the average and promotion to higher duties may mark the course of the individual.
Does the program, thus far, sound too serious and strict for normal happiness and hopefulness in the children? See our young people and you will find the reverse to be true. Granted a child, normal in body and mind, happily busy and interested in duties of genuine importance to and among other busy people, and the question of training in the business proper answers itself: the child learns, absorbs, grows by the easy process of nature. His capital knowledge, as a business man, becomes to him like the mud on the carpet at Willie’s home: “I didn’t bring it into the house, mamma; it just stuck to my shoes and came in itself.” But the youthful business students of to-day require for normal development more than the round of duty of a succession of business days in a fixed place can supply, and more than the average home and home circle of friends and interests of the working boy or girl do supply.
And so we have found it practicable to bring into the business lives of our young people most of the activities usual in the schools. The smaller boys are organized into school and military companies. Each company assembles in the school-rooms, on the fifth floor of the store building, two mornings in the week, where regular instruction is given in arithmetic, grammar, spelling, writing, composition and singing. On two other mornings they have the setting-up exercises and drill of the school of the soldier, with some other physical culture features. The boys elect their own military officers, save, of course, their chief, and these officers become successful disciplinarians, retaining well the respect and obedience of their companies. A very successful fife, bugle and drum corps, composed of the boys themselves, is a feature of this branch of their organization. As fairly indicating the standard of these special activities, let me mention here that this fife, bugle and drum corps has twice marched at the head of the combined Boys’ Brigades of Philadelphia, and has been pronounced the best junior organization of the sort in the city.
Our girls have their school organization, also, each division having two mornings in the week. The branches taught are those above mentioned and also business correspondence, stenography and typewriting, and bookkeeping. Attention is given to singing and physical culture, while an elocution class and a mandolin club are successful outgrowths of this branch of the store school.
The older boys, in number about three hundred, have supper in the store and remain for their school, two evenings in a week. The branches taught are arithmetic, spelling, writing, commercial correspondence, English, stenography, bookkeeping, metric system, mechanical and free-hand drawing, rapid calculation. Military and gymnastic training are given, and as outgrowths of the school are a club for debate and literary exercises, an orchestra, a field music band, a mandolin club, a glee club, an elocution and dramatic class, and a minstrel troupe. Monthly report of the standing and progress of each pupil is made to the parents.
Each of these three branches of the store school has its separate annual commencement exercises conducted similarly to those of other schools and not falling below the latter in general merit. Association Hall has been used in later years for this purpose, but is now much too small for the gathering of the parents and friends interested. Certificates (they call them diplomas) are given to the graduates, but these papers have double significance. They testify to the attainment of a certain standard in the school-work proper and also to the actual number of years of satisfactory service in the business, with promotion from the Cadet Corps to a position in the regular ranks of some one of the store departments—equivalent to a stepping out of the ranks of the business boy or girl into those of the business man or woman.
These graduates have organized themselves into Alumni and Alumnæ Associations and maintain their fellowship, principally in social, but partly in educative work. The school button or pin and the alumni pin prove that these young folks are quite as human as those of other schools and colleges. The standard of class-work done, while perhaps less in quantity for the same length of time, does not, in quality, seem to fall below the standard of other schools. The business training, the business authority and the fact that excellence in school-work is also an important element in business promotion, all give the teacher an advantage, and the scholar an incentive greater than in ordinary schools, and these substantially offset the disadvantage of shorter class-hours. With justifiable pride we call the schools, collectively, the “J. W. C. I.,” “John Wanamaker Commercial Institute.” The “Junior Savings Fund” is another feature of the young people’s organizations of the store, largely taken advantage of and helpfully stimulating to habits of care with money. A summer camp, the outfit for which is owned by the boys, provides for the vacation of many.
The results are very manifest. Jacob Riis says, “the small boy is a boiler with steam up all the time, and if authority sits on the safety-valve there is bound to be an explosion.” We have but few explosions. There is so much of varied and interesting demand upon his activities that our future business man has but little time to scheme out mischief and practically no surplus steam to explode. The incentive to faithful doing of his best is strong. Participation in the actual work of the business daily is the broadest end of school-work. Beginning early and with awakening interest and ambition, the children are in less danger of developing wrong habits, temptation to dishonesty, a sullen or resistful spirit toward those in control, and many another cause by which a naturally well-equipped child fails to fulfill the promise of his childhood.