It might remain unformed, intangible today if it had not been for the coming of the department store. The enormous consolidation and concentration that went to make these enterprises possible brought with them a competition—bitter and to the end unflinching—which hesitated at no legitimate means for the gaining of its end. But competition quickly found that the best means—the finest battle-sword—was honest commercial practice, and so girded that sword to its belt and bade caveat emptor begone.
The great department store around which these chapters are written assumes for itself, neither yesterday, today nor tomorrow, any monopoly of this virtue of commercial honesty. But it does assert, and will continue to assert that it was at least among the pioneers in the complete banishment of caveat emptor, that its founder—the man whose name it so proudly bears today—fought for these high principles when the fighting was at the hardest and the temptations to move in the other direction were most alluring.
Of these principles you shall read in the oncoming chapters of this book. There are many, they are varied—in some respects they vary greatly from those upon which other and equally successful and equally honest merchandising establishments are today operated. Macy's has no quarrel with any of its competitors. It merely writes upon the record that, for itself, it is quite satisfied with the merchandising principles that its founder and the men who came after him saw fit to establish. Upon those the store has prospered—and prospered greatly. And because of such prosperity—social as well as commercial—because it feels that its selling principles are quite as valuable to its patrons as to the store itself, it has no intention of giving change to them. Macy's of today is like in soul and spirit to Macy's of yesterday; Macy's of tomorrow is planned to be like unto the Macy's of today—only vastly larger in its scope and influence.
For the convenience of the reader this book has been divided into three great parts, or books. Time has formed the logical factor of division. Time, as in the theater, forms these three books, or acts—Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. They move in sequence. The stage-hands are placing the setting for the New York of yesterday—the New York that already has begun to fade, far from the eyes of even the oldest of the humans who shall come to read these pages. It is a charming New York, this American city of the late 'fifties, the city whose ladies go shopping in hoopskirts and in crinoline. It has dignity, taste, bustle, enterprise.
But anon of these. The stage is set. The director's foot comes stamping down upon the boards. The curtain rises. The first act begins.