A second principle of the store in those early days which has come easily and naturally down to these—when it is accepted retailing principle everywhere—was the marking of the selling price upon each and every article. It seems odd to think today that the installing of such a fair and commonsense principle should once have been regarded as a stroke of daring initiative in merchandising. Yet the fact remains that in the days when Macy's was young, in the average store one bargained and bargained constantly. There was no single price set upon any article. Even when one went into as fine and showy a store as New York might boast one bartered. Caveat emptor, "Let the buyer beware," was seemingly the dominating retail motto of those days.
But not in Mr. Macy's. The selling price went on every article displayed in the store in those days and in such plain and readable figures that any fairly educated person might clearly understand. This principle alone was one of the huge factors that went toward the early and immediate success of the enterprise.
There was still another merchandising idea born of that great and fertile New England brain that needs to be set down at this time. For many years a notable feature of the advertising of the Macy store has been in the peculiar shading of its prices—at forty-nine cents or ninety-eight, or at $1.98 or $4.98 or $9.98 rather than in the even multiples of dollars. A good many worldly-wise folk have jumped to the quick conclusion that this was due to a desire on the part of the store to make the selling price of any given article seem a little less than it really was. As a matter of fact it was due to nothing of the sort. With all of his respect for the honesty of his sales-force, the Yankee mind of R. H. Macy took few chances—even in that regard. He felt that in almost every transaction the money handed over by the customer would be in even silver coin or bills. To give back the change from an odd-figured selling-price the salesman or the saleswoman would be compelled to do business with the cashier and so to make a full record of the transaction. With the commodities in even dollars and their larger fractions the temptation to pocket the entire amount might be present.
It required a good deal of logic, or long-distance reasoning, to figure out such a possibility and an almost certain safeguard against it. But that was Macy. His was not the day of cash-registers or other checking devices. The salesman and the saleswoman in a store was still apt to find himself or herself an object of suspicion on the part of his or her employer. Business ethics were still in the making. A long road in them was still to be traversed.
Mr. Macy's brother-in-law, Mr. Houghton, did not long remain in partnership with him, but retired to Boston, where he became senior partner of the house of Houghton & Dutton, which is still in existence. For a long number of years thereafter Macy conducted his business alone. Its steadily increasing growth, however, the multiplication of its responsibilities and problems, and his own oncoming years finally caused him to admit to partnership on the first day of January, 1877, two of his oldest and most valued employees, Abiel T. LaForge and Robert M. Valentine. It had long been rumored in the store that Miss Getchell's years of faithful service were finally to be rewarded by a real partnership in it. But even in 1876, woman's place in modern business had not been firmly enough established to permit so radical a step by a business house of as large ramifications and responsibilities as Macy's had come to be. Yet the point was quickly overcome—and in a most unexpected way. Early in 1876 Miss Getchell became Mr. LaForge's wife. And so, in a most active and interested way, she gained at the end a real financial interest in the profitable business, in the upbuilding of which she had been so large a factor.
Mr. LaForge had been a major in the Northern Army during the Civil War; in fact it was there that he had contracted the tuberculosis which was to cause his early demise. He had come into the store in the middle of the 'seventies as one of its first professional buyers—being a specialist in laces—and had developed real executive ability. He had great affection for things military. And when Mr. Macy told him of the uniformed attendants of his beloved Bon Marché, LaForge promptly proceeded to place the entire salesforce of Macy's in uniform. Neat uniforms they were, too: of a bluish-grey cadet cloth, and with stiff upstanding collars of a much darker blue upon the points of which were interwoven the familiar device of the bright red star. The Macy uniforms did not long remain, however. New York is not Paris. And in that day, when uniforms in general were looked upon as something quite foreign to the idea of the republic, American labor was particularly averse to them.
His important partnership step taken, Mr. Macy began to lay down his responsibilities. Despite his great fame and vigorous constitution his health had begun to fail under the multiplicity of duties. Again he turned toward the sea. He embarked upon a long voyage to Europe; in which he was to combine both business and pleasure. From that voyage he never returned. His health sank rapidly and he died in Paris, on the twenty-ninth day of March, 1877.
Two days later in New York, Mr. LaForge and Mr. Valentine formed a partnership, Mr. LaForge, although the younger of the two men, becoming the senior member of the firm. It was provided in the co-partnership papers that the business should be continued under the name of R. H. Macy & Co., until January 1, 1879; and thereafter under the new firm name of LaForge and Valentine. However, Mr. LaForge's death in 1878, followed a year later by that of his wife, prevented this scheme from being carried out. The question of changing the name of a well-established business—now come to be one of the great enterprises of the city of New York—was never again brought forward. The name of Macy had attained far too fine a trade value to be easily dropped, even if sentiment had not come into the reckoning. And sentiment still ruled the big retail house in lower Sixth Avenue, sentiment demanded that the name of one of New York's greatest merchant princes should be henceforth perpetuated in the business which he had so solidly founded. And so that name continues—in growing strength and prosperity.