The most important retail merchant in Canada is Timothy Eaton. He began
his career as an apprentice in a small shop in a village in Ireland,
and now has an establishment which employs the services of six thousand
persons, and which is by far the largest and best equipped retail store
in the Dominion.
It was in a shop in the town of Port Gleone, in the north of Ireland,
that Mr. Eaton obtained his first experience as a storekeeper. Here
he served an apprenticeship of five years, receiving no pay until the
end of his term of service, when he was given the sum of one hundred
pounds. To convey an idea of the long hours that he used to devote to
the services of his employer in Ireland, Mr. Eaton likes to tell about
how he used to watch the donkey carts passing through the village
streets to the market-town of Ballymena at five o’clock every morning,
when he was taking down the shutters. While he had very little time in
those days to devote to anything but his regular work, he was fond of
books, and read _Chambers’s Journal_, an unusual literary selection
for a lad of his education and position. In this publication he read
one day an article on the then almost unknown process of manufacturing
artificial gas. This so interested him that with the help of a
companion he made with his own hands a small gas plant, and by means
of it succeeded in lighting the store. Before that there had been no
gas light in that section of Ireland. The innovation of the young
apprentice aroused great interest and curiosity on the part of the
people of the countryside. They flocked to the shop to view the miracle
of the new light. This proved to be a valuable advertisement for the
establishment, and it lifted young Eaton into a position of prominence
in the community.
He felt, however, that there were no chances in Ireland for the degree
of success of which he dreamed. The potato famine and other misfortunes
had laid the country prostrate. Everybody was talking about the golden
prospects in America, and great numbers were emigrating to the promised
land. One of Timothy Eaton’s elder brothers decided to join the exodus,
and Timothy himself lost no time in making up his mind to go with him.
After crossing the Atlantic they made their way to the town of St.
Marys, in Ontario, and there started a very small store, being glad to
accept produce in payment for their goods. Another brother came to St.
Marys. One of these remained there permanently, while Timothy Eaton,
not satisfied with the possibilities in St. Marys of the mercantile
expansion which he had in mind, went to Toronto, and started a modest
store on one of the lower streets. This was in 1869. In 1883 he had
a larger establishment. In 1887 he had added to his general store
equipment a small factory for the purpose of eliminating the charges of
middlemen and thus conserving the interests of his customers by reduced
prices. The factory was an unqualified success. By means of it, and
through Mr. Eaton’s general methods, the establishment steadily grew
until, at the present time, he has a store which from a comparative
point of view may be regarded, perhaps, as the most successful in the
world. Mr. Eaton’s pay roll includes nearly six thousand names, while
the largest retail store on earth, which is located in Chicago, where
the population is many times greater than that which can be reached by
Mr. Eaton, employs only about twenty-five hundred more persons. It will
be seen that this Chicago establishment is only one-half larger than
the Eaton store. Indeed, the factories of the latter are larger than
those of any establishment which deals directly with retail buyers.
The two leading elements in Mr. Eaton’s remarkable success have been
his store-system, regarded by leading retail merchants as a model, and
his constant endeavor to save money for his customers. It is to this
end that he conducts his business on a cash basis, and that he has
established his factories. He is a very firm believer in bringing goods
direct from the maker to the consumer. In a single department in his
manufacturing section, for instance, there are over a thousand sewing
machines which produce nearly seven thousand garments a day for sale
exclusively in the store. The money which Mr. Eaton has been able to
save by this policy of producing his own goods is directly applied to
the reduction of prices. The fact that his patrons feel that they are
obtaining maximum value at minimum cost is the chief reason of the
store’s great and constantly growing trade.
Another very prominent factor in his success has been his strict
rule of allowing absolutely no misrepresentation. He very strongly
feels that truth is a most important element in any permanent success
in storekeeping and in life in general. In addition to Mr. Eaton’s
constant vigilance in the interest of his patrons, he has always in
mind the well-being of his employees. He was one of the pioneers in the
movement for shorter hours, believing that opportunities for legitimate
rest and recreation give those who are in his service an added zeal and
energy which materially increase the satisfaction of buyers and has a
direct beneficial effect upon the profits and progress of the store.
While Mr. Eaton is proud of his success, he by no means takes all the
credit to himself. It is his idea that the quality which has chiefly
enabled him to build up this great commercial unit lies in his ability
to pick out the right man for the right place. Each employee is held to
a personal responsibility, and is given to understand that he or she is
considered a possibility for the higher positions in the establishment.
Every clerk understands that promotion is to be obtained not by
favoritism, but on the strength alone of conscientious and intelligent
effort.
A celebrated department store proprietor in New York City not long ago
remarked to a Canadian merchant who informed him that he had come to
the New York establishment to obtain hints on the best system of store
management, “Why, it is not at all necessary for you to come down here
for this information. You have a man in Canada, Timothy Eaton, who can
tell you a good deal more about this than most of us can. In fact, we
always keep our eyes on him with a view of obtaining fresh suggestions
as to methods.”