THE BEGINNINGS OF MACY'S
The original small store in Sixth Avenue just south of 14th Street. Here the business starts in 1858
She was forever seeking new lines of activities for the store—branching out here, branching out there, and turning most of these new ventures into lines of resounding profits. "If necessary, we shall handle everything except one," she is reputed to have said. And upon being asked what that one was, she replied brusquely, "Coffins." Once she embarked Macy upon the grocery business—whole decades before the establishment of the present huge grocery department—and while eventually the store was forced to drop for a time this line of merchandise, she succeeded in taking so much business from New York's then leading firm of grocers that they came to Macy, himself, and begged him to drop the competition.
In the retailing world of that day, tradition and habit still governed and with an iron hand. Stores opened early in the morning and kept open until late in the evening, and did this six days of the week. Their workers rose and left their homes—before dawn in many months of the year—and did not return to them until well after dark. Yet they did not complain, for that was the fashion of the times and was recognized as such. Wages were as low as the hours were long. But food-costs also were low, and rentals but a tiny fraction of their present figure. The apartment house had not yet come to New York. It was a development set for a full two decades later. The store-workers lived in boarding-houses, in small furnished rooms or with their families. The greater part of them resided within walking distance of their employment.
Mr. Macy had all of his fair share of traditional New England thrift. One of the favorite early anecdotes of "the old man," as his fellow-workers were prone to call him, and with no small show of affection, concerned his refusal to permit shades to be placed upon the gas-jets in the store, saying that he paid for the light and so wanted the full value for his money. He was skeptical, at the best, about innovations. Moreover, necessity compelled him to keep close watch upon the pennies. At one time he reduced the weekly wages of his cash-girls from two dollars to one-dollar-and-a-half, saying that the war was over and he could no longer afford to pay war wages. Yet when a courageous sales-clerk went to him and told him that she could not possibly live any longer upon her weekly wage of three dollars, he promptly raised it a dollar, without argument or hesitation. And the following week he automatically extended the same increase to every other clerk in the store.
Labor conditions in that day were hard, indeed. The working hours, as I have already said, were long. In regular times the store hours were from eight to six, instead of from nine to five-thirty, as today. On busy days the clerks worked an extra hour, putting the stock in place, while in the fortnight which preceded Christmas the store was open evenings—supposedly until ten o'clock, as a matter of fact, often until long after ten, when the workers were well toward the point of exhaustion. Other conditions of their labor were slightly better. There were no seats in the aisles and conversation between the clerks was punishable by discharge. They might make their personal purchases only on Friday mornings, between eight and nine o'clock, and they received no discount whatsoever. In Mr. Macy's day the only discounts ever given were to the New York Juvenile Asylum in Thirteenth Street nearby, which was an institution peculiarly close to his heart.
There were no lockers in the early days of the old store. In one of its upper floors several small rooms were set aside as a crude sort of cloak-room for the employees. A few nails around the walls sufficed for their outer wraps but there were never enough of these nails to go around. One of the clerks was chosen to come early and stay late in order to supervise these rooms. Inasmuch as there was neither glory nor remuneration in this task, it was not eagerly sought after.
Nevertheless, here was the enlightened day at hand when women would and did work in stores—not alone in great numbers but in a great majority and in many cases to the exclusion of men. It was one of the sweeping economic changes that the Civil War brought in its train. When the men must go to fight in the armies of the North, women must take their places—for only a little while it seemed up to that time. Yet so well did they do much of men's work, that their retention in many of their positions came as a very natural course. So while the decade that preceded the Civil War found few or no professions open to women—save those of teaching or of domestic employment—the one which followed it found them coming in increasing numbers, into a steadily increasing number and variety of endeavors.
So it was then that the great war of the last century brought women behind the counters of the stores—Macy's was no exception to the invasion. They came to stay. And stay they have, to this very day, even though most of the New York stores still retain men to a considerable extent in some of their departments—notably those devoted to the sale of furniture, dress-goods and boots and shoes. For some varieties of stock the male clerk still is the most suitable and successful sort of salesman.