So Macy's progressed. It kept its selling methods as well as its stock, not only abreast of the times, but a little ahead of them. Miss Fallon, who was in the shoe department of those days of the 'eighties, recalls that up to that time the shoes had been kept in large chiffoniers—the sizes "2½" to "3½" in one drawer, "4" to "5" in the next, and so on. This meant that if a clerk was looking for a certain specified width—say "D" or "Double A"—she must rummage through the entire drawer until she came to a pair which had the required size neatly marked upon its lining. The mating of the shoes was accomplished by boring small awl holes in their backs and tying them neatly together. There was no repair shop in the shoe department of that day—merely an aged shoemaker who lived in a basement across Thirteenth Street and to whom shoes for repair were despatched almost as rapidly as they came into the store.
These methods seem crude today. But, even in 1883, they were in full keeping with the times. Merchandising was still in its swaddling clothes; the real science of salesmanship, a thing unknown. Yet men were groping through; and some of these men were in Macy's. You might take as such a man C. B. Webster, who came to the forefront of the business, soon after the deaths of Macy, LaForge and Valentine at the end of its second decade. In fact, his actual admission to the partnership preceded Mr. Valentine's death by a few months. A while later he married Mr. Valentine's widow. And when the last of the old partners was gone his was the steering hand upon the brisk and busy ship.
To help him in his work he brought to his right hand Jerome B. Wheeler, who was admitted as a full partner April 1, 1879, and who so continued until his complete retirement from business, December 31, 1887. Mr. Webster continued with the house for a considerably longer time, maintaining his active partnership until 1896 when he sold his interest in the business to his partners. He continued, however, to retain his private office in the Macy store, coming north with it from Fourteenth Street to Thirty-fourth in 1902, and, until his death four or five years ago, staying close beside the enterprise in which he had been so large a creative factor.
Webster and Wheeler are, then, the names most prominently connected with the second era of the store's growth and activity. They were bound to the founder of the house by blood-ties and by marriage. Mr. Webster's father—Josiah Locke Webster, a merchant of Providence, R. I.—and Mr. Macy were first cousins, their mothers having been sisters. The elder Webster and Rowland H. Macy were, in fact, the warmest of friends and so the proffer by the original proprietor of the store of an opening to his friend's son, came almost as a matter of course. Its educational value alone was enormous. Young Webster accepted. He joined the organization in 1876 and a year later was made one of its buyers. His worth quickly began to assert itself. And within another twelvemonth he had abandoned all idea of returning to his father's store in Providence and entered upon a partnership in the Macy business.
Many of the older employees of the store still remember him distinctly. He was a tall man, stately, conservative in speech and in manner—your typical successful man of business of that time and generation. Yet these very Macy people will tell you today that while his dignity awed, it did not repress. For with it went a kindliness of manner and of purpose. Nor was he—as some of them were then inclined to believe—devoid of any sense of humor. Mr. James Woods, who is assistant superintendent of delivery in the store today and who has been with it for forty-eight years, recalls many and many a battle royal with "C. B. W." as he still calls his old associate and chief, which they had together as they worked in the delivery rooms of the old Fourteenth Street store, hurling packages at one another and then following up with smart fisticuffs.
"In those early days," adds George L. Hammond, who came to the store in 1886 and who is now in its woolen dress-goods department, "I found Mr. Webster a most kindly man, even though taciturn. For instance, one day Mr. Isidor Straus came up to the counter with a man whom he had met upon the floor. They stood talking together. Mr. Straus told the other gentleman that he had recently met a Mr. Cebalos, known at that time as the Cuban Sugar King, and that Mr. Cebalos had spoken to him of having met such a fine gentleman, an American, in France; that this gentleman was evidently a man of education and large means and had said that he was in business in New York. Mr. Cebalos asked Mr. Straus if he had ever known his chance acquaintance in Paris—he was a Mr. Webster, Mr. C. B. Webster. To which Mr. Straus instantly replied: 'Of course I know him. He is the senior member of our firm.' Mr. Cebalos answered: 'What, the senior member of the firm of R. H. Macy & Co.? Why, he never told me that!'"
So much for old-fashioned modesty and conservatism.
The habit of reticence enclosed many of these older executives of Macy's. They were silent oft-times because they could not forget their vast responsibilities—even when they were away from the store. It is told of one of them that once in the middle of the performance in an uptown theater the thought flashed over him that he had neglected to close his safe—a duty which was never relegated to any subordinate. He arose at once from his seat and hurried down to the Store, brought the night watchman to the doors and strode quickly to the private office: only to find the stout doors of its great strong-box firmly fastened. The idea that he had neglected his duty was a nervous obsession. His was not the training nor the mentality that ever neglected duty.
Upon another occasion another partner (Mr. Wheeler) worried himself almost into a nervous breakdown for fear that there would not be enough pennies for the cashier's cage during the forthcoming holiday season. Mr. Macy's odd-price plan was something of a drain upon the copper coin market of New York. And at this particular time, the local shortage being acute, Mr. Wheeler took a night train and hurried to Washington, to see the Secretary of the Treasury. Late the next evening he returned to New York and went to the house of Miss Abbie Golden, his head cashier, at midnight, just to tell her that he had succeeded in getting an order upon the director of the Philadelphia Mint for $10,000 in brand-new copper pennies. After which he went home, to a well-earned rest.