In the bazaars of ancient Bagdad, the human factor was not only the great but the sole dominating influence. The ancient Bagdadians, including those commuters and suburbanites, far and near, who came cameling into town at more or less frequent intervals, did business, not with a machine, not with a system, but with men. Which, being freely translated, meant bargaining. They not merely bargained, but haggled, and haggled at great length. Prices? There were none. The price was what you made it—you and the merchant with whom you finally came to agreement; if finally you did come to agreement.
In the great bazaars of the modern Bagdad one does not need to bargain or to haggle. One is doing business primarily with a system. Prices are fixed, and firmly fixed. This is so generally understood and accepted a rule today that it would be a mere waste of time to discuss it at further length, save possibly to recall once again the large part which Rowland Hussey Macy and the men who followed him played in giving a Gibraltar-like firmness to this solid modern business principle.
Yet even in these same modern, scientifically organized bazaars of today, the system rarely ever can be better than the men who direct it. Four thousand years of business progress between the two Bagdads have not taken from man his God-given power to make or break the best of systems. And Macy's, with its own business system organized, carefully developed and upbuilded through sixty-three long years, is still dependent to no little degree upon the faith and loyalty and interest of its men and women; that same thing which in the days of the war just past we first learned to know by that new name—morale.
Under the sign of the Red Star there are at all times these days not less than five thousand workers; in the Christmas season this pay-roll list runs quickly to seven thousand or over. Then it is that the Macy family takes its most impressive dimensions. Seven thousand souls! It is the population of a good sized town! It is four good regiments—it is the New York Hippodrome with every one of its seats filled and eighteen hundred folk left standing up!
Yet even the all-the-year minimum of five thousand men and women—roughly speaking, one-third men and two-thirds women—is an impressive array. It is a human force which only gains impressiveness when one finds that all but three hundred of it are employed beneath a single roof. The small outside group chiefly comprises those in the delivery stations.
To bring action, foresight, co-operation, correlation—and finally morale—into such a force is a thing not gained by merely talking or thinking about it, but by long study, experimentation and great continued effort. Which means, in turn, that Macy's, among several other things, is a responsibility. For, as we shall presently see, there are any number of problems in addition to those of buying and selling; problems in the solving of which unceasing demands are made upon the store's time, money and heart. It is, in the last analysis a matter of mere good business at that. Yet at Macy's it has been considerably more. And the store's satisfaction in realizing that it was a very early and a very advanced pioneer in developing personnel—and morale—as necessary factors in modern merchandising is a very large one indeed.
A machine or a family—or a department-store—is only as good as its component parts, and by the fact that there is a strict interdependence between the whole and its parts, the success of Macy's must mean that the rank and file of its employees maintain a high average of intelligence, initiative and loyalty. That these qualities are successfully co-ordinated in Macy's is due to real leadership, and it is to this same leadership that we may look for the basis of the store's morale.
Little things indicate. And indicate clearly. Here on the wall of the passageway at the head of the main employee's stair is a placard which reads:
"Once each month three prizes are given to the employees who make the best suggestions for the betterment of store service or conditions. Don't hesitate to try for a prize, even if your suggestion does not appear important. We need your ideas and like to have as many as possible presented each month. Write plainly and drop your suggestions in the boxes furnished for this purpose. The first prize is $10.00, the second $5.00, and the third $2.00."
Here is only a single one of the many evidences of Macy co-operation with the employees. Yet it illustrates clearly the house's policy of making its workers feel an interest in and beyond the mere amount of money that they draw at the end of the week. Not a few of these prizes are awarded for suggestions as to procedure in technical matters relating to the details of the business. Some of them result in the saving of time—and consequently money—and others in the improvement of working conditions. For example: ten dollars was awarded to the man who suggested that the doors of fitting-rooms be equipped with signals to show whether or not they are occupied; five dollars went to the one who made the suggestion that the fire-axe and hook standing in the corner of the customers' stairway be placed on the wall in a suitable case so that children could not play with them; two dollars to her who advanced the very reasonable idea that a scratch-pad in the 'phone booths would prevent memoranda and art manifestations being made upon the walls. Here are a few suggestions that were proffered and acted upon. The entire list runs to a considerable length.