"Isidor Straus!" came the astonished reply. A few hours later a real reunion was in progress.
Long before Appomattox came the utter failure of the once brisk little store at Talboton. In fact, the family had left that small village—very nearly in Sherman's path—and had moved to Columbus. There it sat in debt and desperation, as the Confederacy sank to its inevitable death. The only ray of hope in its existence was the vague possibility of success in Isidor's trip to England. And when the son came back to New York, soon after Lee's surrender, Lazarus Straus went north to meet him. Isidor had prospered. Cotton acceptances were not the bonds of a defunct young nation. England needed cotton—the mills of Manchester had stood idle for weeks and months at a time. Isidor Straus knew when and how to sell his cotton-bills—he was, in every sense of the word, a born merchant. He sold shrewdly, lived frugally, and returned to the United States with $12,000 in gold upon his person!
This was the nugget upon which a new family beginning was made. There was to be no more South for the family of Straus. Business opportunity down there was dead—for a quarter of a century at the very least. But business opportunity in New York had never seemed as great as in the flush days of success and prosperity which followed the ending of the war. Lazarus Straus had brought north in his carpet-bag more cotton acceptances. But he had not been as fortunate as his son in having the time and the place to sell them at best advantage. Cotton within a few months had fallen in the United States to but one-half of its price of the preceding autumn.
It was fortunate, indeed, that Isidor Straus had his little bag of golden coin at that moment. It was that gold that enabled him to start with his father, under the name of L. Straus & Son, a rather humble crockery business in a top-floor loft at 161 Chambers Street. The specie went toward the establishment of the new business. The debts of the old were already being paid. Lazarus Straus was, I believe, one of the few Southern merchants who paid their debts in the North in full, and thereby secured a great personal credit. This last came without great difficulty—in after years it was to be said that Isidor Straus could raise more money upon his word alone than any other man in New York. It was Mr. Bliss—of Bliss & Co., long time wholesalers of the city and predecessors of the well-known Tofft, Weller & Co.—who, upon being applied to by Isidor Straus for financial assistance, asked what he and his father proposed to do to regain their fortune.
"Start in the china business," was the simple reply.
"You have your courage," was Mr. Bliss's reply, "your father at the age of fifty-seven—and yourself—to embark upon a brand new business, in which neither of you have had the slightest experience."
But such was the old New Yorker's faith in these men that he sold them the huge bill of merchandise, some $45,000, under which they embarked their business, saying that they could pay him, one-third in cash, and that he could well afford to wait two or even three years for the balance.
He did not have to wait that long. Again the business—in the hands of hard-working born merchandisers—prospered, from the very instant of its beginning. It opened for selling and made its first sale, June 1, 1866. And again within a few short weeks, L. Straus & Son was demanding more room for expansion, and getting it—this time in the form of a ground floor and basement of that same building in Chambers Street. It was still both new and young, however. Its hired employees were but three: a packer, his helper and a selector, or stock-room man. Isidor Straus ran all the details of the store, opening it and closing it each day and acting as its book-keeper, until a year later when Nathan Straus came into the organization, becoming its first salesman. The business was getting ahead. Despite the difficulties and the humbleness of its start it had sold more than $60,000 worth of goods, in the first twelve months of its existence.