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He was sixty years old when he inaugurated his first co-operative store, which in fact is the parent of our modern Department-Store. In this store he proposed to buy any useful article or product which any man might make or produce, figuring on cost of the raw material and sixpence an hour for labor.
Some fifteen years ago the head of our Coal Trust announced during a great strike that the question would be settled "by the Christian men to whom God in His Infinite Wisdom has given control of the property interests of this country". And on that declaration all pious merchants stand; whatever their denominations, Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian or Hebrew, their Sabbath doctrines are alike, as their week-day practices are alike; whether it is Rockefeller shooting his Bayonne oil-workers and burning alive the little children of his miners; or smooth John Wanamaker, paying starvation wages to department-store girls and driving them to the streets; or that clergyman who, at a gathering of society ladies, members of the "Law and Order League" of Denver, declared in my hearing that if he could have his way he would blow up the home of every coal-striker with dynamite; or the Rev.
A square box, neither more nor less, fourteen by fourteen feet of bare board wall, unpainted and unpapered. There was an iron bed, a willow rocker, and a rude closet for clothes in one corner. A duplicate of the department-store bargain rug in the other room lay on the floor. On an upturned box stood an enamel pitcher and a tin washbasin. That was all.
For I know the truth about my work; I've no vanities, I'd be as remorseless a critic of myself as Shelley was. I'd be willing to leave it to time for my real friends to find me out I'd give up the department-store public to the authors who wanted it. And then, too, I could sell my books cheaply, so that the poor could get them.
"O, I ain't no doubt it can be done, an' even if it can't, the smell o' karrysene is healthy, an' you wouldn't mind a faint whifft of it now an' then, clingin' to you, comin' outer your bath, would you? Or if you did, you might set over against the oil-smell one o' them strong bath-powders that's like the perfumery-counter in a department-store broke loose, an' let 'em fight it out between 'em.
"Good-morning," said a low voice from the door as I stood encouraging the camp-fire with splinter wood and dead palmetto fans. Fresh and sweet from her toilet as a dew-drenched rose, Miss Barrison stood there sniffing the morning air daintily, thoroughly. "Too much perfume," she said "too much like ylang-ylang in a department-store. Central Park smells sweeter on an April morning."
When general topics failed, the disturber would catechize the library-woman about Louisa M. Alcott, or the failure about his desultory inquiries into Christian Science, or Mrs. Gray about the pictures plastering the dining-room a dozen spiritual revelations of apples and oranges, which she had bought at a department-store sale. The maverick's name was Fillmore J. Benson.
The Senate heard the report of the Rheinhard Commission, and in spite of the merchants' protests the women's bill was passed without a dissenting vote. The most important provision of the bill was the ten-hour limit which it placed on the work of women under twenty-one. The overwhelming majority of department-store clerks are girls under twenty-one.
In the end he came to realize that he had achieved that most cruel of all literary ironies, the succes d'estime. The critics agreed that he had written a most unusual book; but then, the critics did not really count they had no way of making their verdict effective. What determined success or failure was the department-store public.
The extent of the depression is indicated by the following approximate percentages of activity during the past three months as compared with the highly prosperous year of 1928: Value of department-store sales 93% of 1928 Total of bank deposits 105% of 1928 Wholesale prices all commodities 83% of 1928 Cost of living 94% of 1928
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