FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE"
Of course we visited Marshall Field's.
The very obliging gentleman who showed us about the inconceivably
enormous buildings, rushing from floor to floor, poking in and out
through mysterious, baffling doors and passage-ways, now in the public
part of the store where goods are sold, now behind the scenes where they
are made--this gentleman seemed to have the whole place in his
head--almost as great a feat as knowing the whole world by heart.
"How much time can you spare?" he asked as we set out from the top
floor, where he had shown us a huge recreation room, gymnasium, and
dining room, all for the use of the employees.
"How long should it take?"
"It can be done in two hours," he said, "if we keep moving all the
time."
"All right," I said--and we did keep moving. Through great rooms full of
trunks, of brass beds, through vast galleries of furniture, through
restaurants, grilles, afternoon tea rooms, rooms full of curtains and
coverings and cushions and corsets and waists and hats and carpets and
rugs and linoleum and lamps and toys and stationery and silver, and
Heaven only knows what else, over miles and miles of pleasant, soft,
green carpet, I trotted along beside the amazing man who not only knew
the way, but seemed even to know the clerks. Part of the time I tried to
look about me at the phantasmagoria of things with which civilization
has encumbered the human race; part of the time I listened to our
cicerone; part of the time I walked blindly, scribbling notes, while my
companion guided my steps.
Here are some of the notes:
Ten thousand employees in retail store----Choral society, two hundred
members, made up of sales-people----Twelve baseball teams in retail
store; twelve in wholesale; play during season, and, finally, for
championship cup, on "Marshall Field Day"----Lectures on various topics,
fabrics, etc., for employees, also for outsiders: women's clubs,
etc.----Employees' lunch: soup, meat, vegetables, etc., sixteen
cents----Largest retail custom dressmaking business in the
country----Largest business in ready-made apparel----Largest retail
millinery business----Largest retail shoe business----Largest branch of
Chicago public library (for employees)----Largest postal sub-station in
Chicago----Largest--largest--largest!
Now and then when something interested me particularly we would pause
and catch our breath. Once we stopped for two or three minutes in a fine
schoolroom, where some stock-boys and stock-girls were having a lesson
in fractions--"to fit them for better positions." Again we paused in a
children's playroom, where mothers left their youngsters while they went
to do their shopping, and where certain youngsters, thus deposited, were
having a gorgeous time, sliding down things, and running around other
things, and crawling over and under still other things. Still again we
paused at the telephone switchboard--a switchboard large enough to take
care of the entire business of a city of the size of Springfield, the
capital of Illinois. And still again we paused at the postal
sub-station, where fifty to sixty thousand dollars' worth of stamps are
sold in a year, and which does as great a postal business, in the
holiday season, as the whole city of Milwaukee does at the same period.
At one time we would be walking through a great shirt factory, set off
in one corner of that endless building, all unknown to the shoppers who
never get behind the scenes; then we would pop out again into the
dressed-up part of the store, just as one goes from the kitchen and the
pantry of a house into the formality of dining room and drawing room.
And as we appeared thus, and our guide was recognized as the assistant
manager of all that kingdom, with its population of ten thousand,
saleswomen would rise suddenly from seats, little gossiping groups would
disperse quickly, and floor men, who had been talking with saleswomen,
would begin to occupy themselves with other matters. I remember coming
upon a "silence room" for saleswomen--a large, dark, quiet chamber, in
which was an attendant; also a saleswoman who was restlessly resting by
rocking herself in a chair. And as we moved through the store we kept
taking off our hats as we went behind the scenes, and putting them on as
we emerged into the public parts. Never before had I realized how much
of a department store is a world unseen by shoppers. At one point, in
that hidden world, a vast number of women were sewing upon dresses. I
had hardly time to look upon this picture when, rushing through a little
door, in pursuit of my active guide, I found myself in a maze of glass,
and long-piled carpets, and mahogany, and electric light, and pretty
frocks, disposed about on forms. Also disposed about were many "perfect
thirty-sixes," with piles of taffy-colored hair, doing the "debutante
slouch" in their trim black costumes, so slinky and alluring. Here I had
a strong impulse to halt, to pause and examine the carpets and woodwork,
and one thing and another. But no! Our guardian had a professional pride
in getting us through the store within two hours, according to his
promise. I would gladly have allowed him an extra ten minutes if I could
have spent it in that place, but on we went--my companion and I dragging
behind a little and looking backward at the Lorelei--I remember that,
because I ran into a man and knocked my hat off.
At last we came to the information bureau, and as there was a
particularly attractive young person behind the desk, it occurred to me
that this would be a fine time to get a little information.
"I wonder if I can stump that sinuous sibyl," I said.
"Try it," said our conductor.
So I went over to her and asked: "How large is this store, please?"
"You mean the building?"
"Yes."
"There is fifty acres of floor space under this roof," she said. "There
are sixteen floors: thirteen stories rising two hundred and fifty-eight
feet above the street, and three basements, extending forty-three and a
half feet below. The building takes up one entire block. The new
building devoted exclusively to men's goods is just across Washington
Street. That building is--"
"Thank you very much," I said. "That's all I want to know about that.
Can you tell me the population of Chicago?"
"Two million three hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred," she
said glibly, showing me her pretty teeth.
Then I racked my brains for a difficult question.
"Now," I said, "will you please tell me where Charles Towne was born?"
"Do you mean Charles A. Towne, the lawyer; Charles Wayland Towne, the
author; or Charles Hanson Towne, the poet?" she demanded.
I managed to say that I meant the poet Towne.
"He was born in Louisville, Kentucky," she informed me sweetly. She
even gave me the date of his birth, too, but as the poet is a friend of
mine, I will suppress that.
"Is that all?" she inquired presently, seeing that I was merely gazing
at her.
"Yes, you adorable creature." The first word of that sentence is all
that I really uttered. I only thought the rest.
"Very well," she replied, shutting the book in which she had looked up
the Townes.
"Thanks very much," I said.
"Don't mention it," said she--and went about her business in a way that
sent me about mine.
* * * * *
Aside from its vastness and the variety of its activities, two things
about Marshall Field's store interested me particularly. One is the
attitude maintained by the company with regard to claims made in the
advertising of "sales." When there is a "sale" at Field's comparisons of
values are not made. It may be said that certain articles are cheap at
the price at which they are being offered, but it is never put in the
form: "Was $5. Now $2.50." Field's does not believe in that.
"We take the position," an official explained to me, "that things are
worth what they will bring. For instance, if some manufacturer has made
too many overcoats, and we are able to get them at a bargain, or if
there is a mild winter and overcoats do not sell well, we may place on
sale a lot of coats which were meant to be sold at $40, but which we are
willing to sell at $22.50. In such a case we never advertise 'Worth
$40.' We just point out that these are exceptionally good coats for the
money. And, when we say that, it is invariably true. This advertising is
not so sensational as it could be made, of course, but we think that in
the long run it teaches people to rely upon us."
Another thing which interested me in Field's was the appearance of the
saleswomen. They do not look like New York saleswomen. In the aggregate
they look happier, simpler, and more natural. I saw no women behind the
counters there who had the haughty, indifferent bearing, the
nose-in-the-air, to which the New York shopper is accustomed. Among
these women, no less than among the rich, the Chicago spirit seemed to
show itself. It is everywhere, that spirit. I admit that, perhaps, it
does not go with omnipresent taxicabs. I admit that there are more
effete cities than Chicago. The East is full of them. But that any city
in the country has more sterling simplicity, greater freedom from sham
and affectation among all classes, more vigorous cultivation, or more
well-bred wealth, I respectfully beg to doubt.
No, I have _not_ forgotten Boston and Philadelphia.
* * * * *
In an earlier chapter I told of a man I met upon a train who, though he
lived in Buffalo, had never seen Niagara Falls. In Chicago it occurred
to me that, though I had worked on a newspaper, I had never stood as an
observer and watched a newspaper "go through." So, one Saturday night
after sitting around the city room of the Chicago "Tribune"--which is
one of the world's great newspapers--and talking with a group of men as
interesting as any men I ever found together, I was placed in charge of
James Durkin, the world's most eminent office boy, who forthwith took me
to the nether regions of the "Tribune" Building.
With its floor of big steel plates, its towering presses, vast and
incomprehensible, and its grimy men in overalls, the pressroom struck me
as resembling nothing so much as the engine room of an ocean liner.
The color presses were already roaring, shedding streams of printed paper
like swift waterfalls, down which shot an endless chain of Mona
Lisas--for the Mona Lisa took the whole front page of the "Tribune"
colored supplement that week. At the bottom, where the "folder" put the
central creases in them, the paper torrents narrowed to a disappearing
point, giving the illusion of a subterranean river, vanishing beneath
the floor. But the river didn't vanish. It was caught, and measured, and
folded, and cut, and counted by machinery, as swift, as eye-defying, as
a moving picture; machinery which miraculously converted a cataract into
prim piles of Sunday newspapers, which were, in turn, gathered up and
rushed away to the mailing room--whither, presently, we followed.
In the mailing room I made the acquaintance of a machine with which, if
it had not been so busy, I should have liked to shake hands, and sit
down somewhere for a quiet chat. For it was a machine possessed of the
Chicago spirit: modest, businesslike, effective, and highly intelligent.
I did not interrupt it, but watched it at its work. And this is what it
did: It took Sunday papers, one by one, from a great pile which was
handed to it every now and then, folded them neatly, wrapped them in
manila paper, sealed them up with mucilage, squeezed them, so that the
seal would hold, addressed them to out-of-town subscribers and dropped
them into a mail sack. There was a man who hovered about, acting as a
sort of valet to this highly capable machine, but all he had to do was
to bring it more newspapers from time to time, and to take away the mail
bags when they were full, or when the machine had finished with all the
subscribers in one town, and began on another. Nor did it fail to serve
notice of each such change. Every time it started in on a new town it
dipped its thumb in some red ink, and made a dab on the wrapper of the
first paper, so that its valet--poor human thing--would know enough to
furnish a new mail bag. I noted the name to which one red-dabbed paper
was addressed: _E. J. Henry, Bosco, Wis._, and I wondered if Mr. Henry
had ever wondered what made that florid mark.
It was near midnight then. All Bosco was asleep. Was Mr. Henry dreaming?
And however wonderful his dream, could it surpass, in wonder, this
gigantic organization which, for a tiny sum, tells him, daily,
everything that happens everywhere?
Think of the men and the machines that work for Mr. E. J. Henry,
resident of Bosco, in the Badger State! Think of the lumbermen who cut
the logs; of the Eastern rivers down which those logs float; of the
great pulp mills which convert them into paper. Think of the railroad
trains which bring that paper to Chicago. Think of the factories which
build presses for the ultimate defacement of that paper; and the other
factories which make the ink. Think of the reporters working everywhere!
Think of the men who laid the wires with which the world is webbed, that
news may fly; and the men who sit at the ends of those wires, in all
parts of the globe, ticking out the story of the day to the "Tribune"
office in Chicago, where it is received by other men, who give it to the
editors, who prepare it for the linotypers, who set it for the
stereotypers, who make it into plates for the presses, which print it
upon the paper, which is folded, addressed, and dropped into a mail bag,
which is rushed off in a motor through the midnight streets and put
aboard a train, which carries it to Bosco, where it is taken by the
postman and delivered at the residence of Mr. E. J. Henry, who, after
tearing the manila wrapper, opening the paper, and glancing through it,
remarks: "Pshaw! There's no news to-day!" and, forthwith, rising from
the breakfast table, takes up an old pair of shoes, wraps them in his
copy of the Chicago "Tribune," tucks them under his arm and takes them
down to the cobbler to be half-soled.
_Sic transit gloria!_
Up-stairs, on the roof of the "Tribune" Building, in a kind of
deck-house, is a club, made up of members of the staff, and here,
through the courtesy of some of the editors, my companion and I were
invited to have supper. When I had eaten my fill, I had a happy thought.
Here, at my mercy, were a lot of men who were engaged in the business of
sending out reporters to molest the world for interviews. I decided to
turn the tables and, then and there, interview them--all of them. And I
did it. And they took it very well.
I had heard that the "Column"--that sometimes, if not always, humorous
newspaper department, which now abounds throughout the country,
threatening to become a pestilence--originated with the "Tribune." I
asked about that, and in return received, from several sources, the
history of "Columns," as recollected by these men.
Probably the first regular humorous column in the country--certainly the
first to attract any considerable attention,--was conducted for the
"Tribune" by Henry Ten Eyck White, familiarly known as "Butch" White. It
started about 1885, under the heading, "Lakeside Musings." After running
this column for some five years, White gave it up, and it was taken
over, under the same heading, by Eugene Field, who made it even better
known than it had been before.
Field had started as a "columnist" on the Denver "Tribune," where he had
run his "Tribune Primer"; later he had been brought to Chicago by
Melville E. Stone (now general manager of the Associated Press) and
Victor F. Lawson, who had together established the Chicago "Daily News,"
of which Mr. Lawson is the present editor and publisher. Field's column
in the "News" was known as "Sharps and Flats." In it appeared his free
translations of the Odes of Horace, and much of his best known verse.
Also he printed gossip of the stage and of literary matters--the latter
being gathered by him at the meetings of a little club, "The
Bibliophiles," composed of prominent Chicagoans. This club used to meet
in the famous old McClurg bookstore.
[Illustration: Chicago's skyline from the docks.... A city which rebuilt
itself after the fire; in the next decade doubled its size; and now has
a population of two million, plus a city of about the size of San
Francisco]
In 1890 George Ade came from Indiana, and after having been a reporter
on the Chicago "Record" for one year, started his famous "Stories of the
Street and Town," under which heading much of his best early work
appeared. This department was illustrated by John T. McCutcheon, another
Indiana boy. At about this time, Roswell Field, a brother of Eugene, was
conducting a column called "Lights and Shadows" in the Chicago "Evening
Post," in which paper Finley Peter Dunne was also beginning his
"Dooleys." Dunne was born in Chicago and was a reporter on several
Chicago papers before he found his level. He got the idea for "Dooley"
from Jim McGarry, who had a saloon opposite the "Tribune" building, and
employed a bartender named Casey, who was a foil for him. McGarry was
described to me by a "Tribune" man who knew him, as "a crusty old
cuss."
After some years Dunne left the "Post" and became editor of the Chicago
"Journal," to which paper came (from Vermont by way of Duluth) Bert
Leston Taylor. Taylor ran a department on the "Journal" which was called
"A Little About Everything," and one of his "contribs" was a young
insurance man, Franklin P. Adams. Later, when Taylor left the "Journal"
to take a position on the "Tribune," Adams left the insurance business
and went at "columning" in earnest, replacing Taylor on the "Journal."
Some years since Adams migrated to the metropolis, where he now conducts
a column called "The Conning Tower" in the New York "Tribune."
Taylor, in the meantime, had started his famous column known as "A
Line-o'-Type or Two." This he ran for three years, after which he moved
to New York and became editor of "Puck." Before Taylor left the
"Tribune," Wilbur D. Nesbit, who had been running a column which he
signed "Josh Wink," in the Baltimore "American," came to Chicago and
started a column called "The Top o' the Morning," which, for a time,
alternated with Taylor's "Line-o'-Type." Later Nesbit moved over to the
"Post," where he conducted a department called "The Innocent Bystander,"
leaving the "Tribune," for a time, without a "column."
In the next few years two other "columns" started in Chicago,
"Alternating Currents," conducted by S. E. Kiser, for the
"Record-Herald," and "In the Wake of the News," which was started in the
"Tribune" by the late "Hughey" Keough, who is still remembered as an
exceptionally gifted man. When Keough died, Hugh S. Fullerton ran the
column for a time, after which it was taken up by R. W. Lardner, who, I
believe, continues to conduct it, although he has recently written
baseball stories which have been published in "The Saturday Evening
Post," and have attracted much attention. Kiser also continues his
column in the "Record-Herald." Another column, which started a year or
so ago is "Breakfast Food" in the Chicago "Examiner," conducted by
George Phair, formerly of Milwaukee.
The Chicago "Tribune" now has two "columns," for, five years since, it
recaptured Bert Leston Taylor, and brought him back to revive his
"Line-o'-Type." He has been there ever since, and, so far as I know
"columns," his is the best in the United States. It has been widely
imitated, as has also been the work of the "Tribune's" famous
cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon. But something that a "Tribune" man said
to me of McCutcheon, is no less true, I think, of Taylor: "They can
imitate his style, but they cannot imitate his mind."