The Romance of a Great Store by Edward Hungerford

The Romance of a Great Store offers an in-depth and compelling chronicle of R. H. Macy & Co., documenting its evolution from a modest fancy goods shop in 1858 to a monumental and pioneering modern department store. Edward Hungerford meticulously traces the store’s journey through three eras: Yesterday, covering the visionary founding by Rowland Hussey Macy and the crucial leadership of the Straus family; Today, detailing the complex organizational structure, scientific buying, and distribution systems; and Tomorrow, looking ahead to future expansion plans. At its core, this narrative celebrates the pioneering moral code of Macy’s, which famously championed commercial honesty and banished the old rule of caveat emptor (“Let the buyer beware”).

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Who May Benefit from the Book

• Merchandising and retail professionals
• Students of American business and economic history
• Leaders interested in modern organizational development and employee morale
• Historians and enthusiasts of New York City development
• Members of the modern “Macy Family” interested in their institution’s foundation

Top 3 Key Insights

1. Macy’s fundamentally revolutionized merchandising by establishing core principles: fixed, marked prices and a cash-only policy, directly challenging the centuries-old rule of caveat emptor.
2. The Straus family cemented the store’s enduring success by strategically moving the business to Herald Square and aggressively defending consumer interests through landmark anti-price-fixing lawsuits.
3. The success of the “humanized machine” relies heavily on employee morale, fostered through extensive training, educational opportunities, and comprehensive recreation and aid services.

4 More Lessons and Takeaways

1. The immense consolidation inherent in the department store model introduced a bitter competition that quickly found “the best means” was honest commercial practice.
2. Visionary leadership is paramount; Macy foresaw New York’s explosive growth, enabling him to leave behind failures and successfully plant his enterprise in the nascent metropolis.
3. The Depositors’ Account Department successfully transformed the costly credit system into an asset, allowing the cash-only store to offer charge account conveniences while paying customers interest.
4. Modern business efficiency necessitates a thorough, scientific approach to all functions, from hiring (scientific selection) and pricing (Comparison Department) to complex logistics (delivery systems and floor plans).

The Book in 1 Sentence

This history narrates how R. H. Macy & Co. transitioned from a modest 1858 fancy goods shop into a modern retailing institution, championing integrity and innovation.

The Book Summary in 1 Minute

The Romance of a Great Store chronicles the sixty-plus-year journey of Macy’s, starting with Rowland Hussey Macy’s modest 1858 fancy goods shop in New York. education, and morale that built this commercial powerhouse.

The 1 Completely Unique Aspect

The book meticulously details how Macy’s, through its rigorous cash-only policy (even for purchasing stock), established a foundational system that enabled its consistent guarantee to undersell competitors by a minimum of six per cent, a policy backed by an active Comparison Department and successful legal battles against price maintenance efforts.

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Chapter-wise Book Summary

Yesterday

I. The Ancestral Beginnings of Macy’s

“The final triumph of New England conscience and energy and vision.”

This chapter traces the origins of Rowland Hussey Macy (born August 29, 1822) to the earliest seafaring families of Nantucket, including the Macys, Coffins, and Myricks. Macy followed the common Nantucket custom, going to sea at fifteen on a four-year whaling voyage, which earned him the title of Captain Macy. After marrying Louisa Houghton, he left the sea to pursue store-keeping. His first store in Boston failed, but a second venture in Haverhill proved successful. Convinced that New York was destined to be the nation’s undisputed metropolis, Macy sold his business and moved his family to the growing city in 1858.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • R. H. Macy (born 1822) descended from Nantucket seafaring families.
  • Macy’s first Boston store failed; his second Haverhill store succeeded.
  • Driven by vision, Macy moved to New York in 1858.

II. The New York That Macy First Saw

“Caveat emptor is indeed a dead phrase.”

Arriving in 1858, Rowland H. Macy found a metropolitan New York with 650,000 residents, rapidly moving uptown, with Union Square as the center of fashion. Macy initially opened a modest fancy goods shop at 204 Sixth Avenue. Here, he pioneered two bedrock policies that defined modern merchandising: cash transactions only (for both buying and selling) and the fixed selling price marked on every article, effectively banishing bargaining and caveat emptor. Macy gradually evolved his specialized shop toward the department store idea, inspired partly by the expanded country store model and Paris’s Bon Marché. His early success was significantly supported by Margaret Getchell, a former school-teacher and brilliant executive known for her strict adherence to honesty and discipline in the cashier’s office. Macy adopted a red star as his trademark, a symbol of success derived from navigating his ship by a star at sea.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • Macy began in 1858 on Sixth Avenue, specializing in fancy goods.
  • He instituted the foundational principles of fixed prices and cash-only sales.
  • Executive Margaret Getchell was crucial in developing store efficiency and ethics.

III. Fourteenth Street Days

“A Macy training became recognized as a business schooling of the greatest value.”

By 1883, Macy’s had completed its first quarter-century, employing over fifteen hundred people. The Sixth Avenue location thrived due to the new elevated railroad, confirming Macy’s foresight. Following Macy’s death in 1877, the store was guided by partners Abiel T. LaForge and Robert M. Valentine, though both died shortly thereafter. This era saw the store embrace innovation: arc lamps were installed in 1878, followed by internal elevators and pneumatic tubes for carrying cash to the central cage. C. B. Webster and Jerome B. Wheeler took the helm, guiding the enterprise. Wheeler cultivated the famous Christmas Toy Department, which became a vast annual spectacle. The store continued its pioneering tradition of large-scale newspaper advertising, splurging ink when competitors made small, stilted announcements.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The store grew into a major landmark, employing over 1,500 people by 1883.
  • Early technology like arc lights and elevators were adopted to improve operations.
  • The store became famous for its annual Toy Department and robust advertising.

IV. The Coming of Isidor and Nathan Straus

“Now were there indeed real guiding hands upon the enterprise.”

This chapter details the arrival of the influential Straus family. Lazarus Straus immigrated after the 1848 German Revolution, settling initially in Georgia. After the Civil War ruined his Southern business, he and his son Isidor—who had returned from Europe with $12,000 in gold from selling cotton bills—founded L. Straus & Son, a wholesale crockery business in New York in 1866. The business prospered, focusing on fine European porcelains, and Nathan Straus joined as the first salesman. In 1874, Nathan successfully convinced Macy to rent them a department in the basement for selling crockery, marking a crucial step in the “real incarnation of the department-store in America”. This prosperous arrangement lasted fourteen years until 1888, when the Straus brothers acquired full control of R. H. Macy & Co., purchasing Jerome B. Wheeler’s interest. The Straus family immediately provided the new force and energy needed to guide the growing enterprise.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • Lazarus and Isidor Straus began L. Straus & Son (crockery) after the Civil War.
  • The Strauses operated a successful crockery department within Macy’s starting in 1874.
  • Isidor and Nathan Straus acquired control of R. H. Macy & Co. in 1888.

V. The Store Treks Uptown

“The construction of the two modern railroad terminals—the one in Thirty-third Street and the other in Forty-second—has created in the district that lies between them what today would seem to be the permanent retail shopping center of the city.”

The early 1900s brought rapid infrastructural changes to New York, particularly the new subway system. Recognizing that the retail center was moving uptown, and unable to acquire title to their leased Fourteenth Street site, Macy’s management decided to relocate. They strategically chose Herald Square (Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street), anticipating its critical importance, especially with the later arrival of the Pennsylvania Station. The construction phase involved complex maneuvers, including dealing with Rev. Duane Pell’s holdout on the corner plot; Macy’s ingeniously built its own wide arcade inside its property to compensate. Construction was swift, taking only about six months. The new building opened on November 8, 1902, featuring nine stories, over a million square feet of space, and continuous horizontal-step escalators. Macy’s bold move catalyzed nearly all major downtown competitors to follow suit, solidifying the new retail district.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The store abandoned its overcrowded 14th Street location due to uptown migration and leasehold limitations.
  • Macy’s opened its new, nine-story flagship store at Herald Square in November 1902.
  • The move established the 34th-42nd Street area as the permanent retail heart of the city.

Today

I. A Day in a Great Store

“Noise, particularly surplus noise, is quite unnecessary in a machine which is functioning well.”

The store functions virtually 24 hours a day, beginning with night watchmen and cleaning squads who thoroughly scrub the store and sift debris for lost valuables. Executives (“specials”) begin signing in by 8:00 a.m., followed by the general workforce who arrive between 8:30 and 8:45, using brass checks instead of time clocks. At 9:00 a.m., the doors open and the shopping begins. The afternoons represent the peak shopping time, sometimes seeing 300,000 visitors on a busy December day. Macy’s insists its primary attraction is its prices, avoiding external entertainment. The internal organization includes specialized workshops, such as engraving, jewelry repair, and even toy restoration. When the store closes at 5:30 p.m., the cleaning squads move in, and employees exit, undergoing a brief check by detectives to ensure packages have the proper check-room visé.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The internal operations run continuously, including night shifts for maintenance.
  • The workforce uses time sheets and brass checks, not time clocks.
  • Customer exit is supervised to prevent theft, requiring employees to check in personal packages.

II. Organization in a Modern Store

“We merely write 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.”

The Macy organization is a vast, complex “humanized machine” led by the three Straus brother partners. The store’s structure is detailed through specialized departments—Merchandise, Financial, Publicity, and General Management—the latter supervising everything from sales force (Floor Superintendents/Section Managers) to customer appeals. Merchandise is strategically placed based on demand, with staples on the main floor and more considered purchases (like rugs and furniture) relegated to upper floors. CruDepositors’ Account Department** was established, allowing customers to deposit money against purchases and earn four per cent interest, eliminating the costly machinery of credit collection.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The General Manager is responsible for all personnel, rules, and dispute resolution.
  • The Comparison Department ensures prices are maintained at least six per cent below rivals.
  • Macy’s won seminal legal battles to protect its right to undersell patented and copyrighted goods, luxuries (requiring taste, purchased by those with surplus funds), and novelties (most hazardous, relying on anticipating fads and quick decisions). The store’s buying office is highly popular, receiving 400 to 650 salesmen daily, thanks in part to the reliable cash payment within ten days. Furthermore, Macy’s maintains extensive permanent foreign buying organizations in Paris, London, and Belfast, which secure unique imports and range far afield to places like Bagdad for rugs.
• Chapter Key Points:
  • Sixty-nine buyers function as profit-and-loss department managers.
  • Buying strategies are differentiated for staples, luxuries, and high-risk novelties.
  • Foreign offices are maintained globally to procure specialties and rare items.

IV. Displaying and Selling the Goods

“The pneumatic tubes… have a total of 125,000 feet of this tubing, or nearly twenty-four miles.”

Merchandise transport begins in the Receiving Department, where trucks unload their cargoes in a two-hundred-foot tunnel. Goods are checked, verified, and tagged by “markers” before heading to sales floors or one of the four store warehouses. Macy’s prioritizes product visibility over elaborate, costly settings, ensuring savings are passed to the customer. Advertising is crucial, overseen by the advertising department; this includes the highly valued street-front window displays, which are scheduled and designed by a large staff of experts. The store maintains a strict policy of honesty in advertising, eliminating superlatives and guaranteeing claims (e.g., “wool” means all-wool). Sales staff efficiency is maintained through training and a complex system of sales slips (original, duplicate, triplicate) required for tracking and auditing every transaction. Finally, the “pulsing heart” of the store is the pneumatic tube system, which handles cash for 250 stations via 24 miles of tubing, achieving an average of 150,000 round trips daily.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • Display strategy focuses on product appeal, avoiding expensive décor to maintain low prices.
  • Advertising is rigidly conservative; the store stands behind all claims against misrepresentation.
  • The pneumatic tube network facilitates over 7,000 miles of cash carrier travel daily.

V12, 313]. Macy’s guarantees delivery by the morning after purchase in the city, and offers free shipping across large parts of the US based on purchase price. Over half of all deliveries are Collect-On-Delivery (C.O.D.), which requires drivers to act as miniature cashiers. Suburban delivery relies on five year-round sub-stations (Queens, Woodlawn, Hackensack, Newark, and West New Brighton). The basement can process 25,000 packages on an average day. Furniture, the heaviest merchandise, is handled from a ninth-floor department using massive freight elevators for loading, often un-crated, directly onto large trucks.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The fleet of 250+ vehicles includes horses, which are more economical than trucks for short-stop city routes.
  • Delivery is managed via five permanent and one summer suburban sub-stations.
  • The system handles huge volumes, with the basement sorting area processing up to 5,000 packages per hour.

VI. The Macy Family

“Ambition is not curbed in Macy’s. On the contrary, it is stimulated to every possible extent.”

The store’s five to seven thousand workers are regarded as the “Macy Family,” upon whose morale the success of the system depends. A suggestion system provides monetary prizes for employee ideas that better service or conditions. The Employment Department employs scientific selection and prioritizes hiring new workers referred by existing loyal employees. Crucially, no department head has the power to dismiss a worker; terminations must be personally approved by the General Manager to ensure the Golden Rule is followed and justice is maintained. The Training Department provides comprehensive, ongoing education to all employees, covering system procedures, sales techniques (including language etiquette), and specialized merchandise knowledge. Macy’s also runs a “special squad” for college graduates, who must rotate through essential, often manual, departments (receiving, marking, delivery) to gain a thorough, hands-on understanding of the entire store operation.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The workforce is stabilized by an internal suggestion system and a policy of promotion from within.
  • The General Manager retains final authority over all dismissals to ensure employee fairness.
  • The Training Department provides mandatory educational and follow-up instruction to all new hires and transfers.

VII. The Family at Play

“The fact that the worker, himself, may take the matter to the general manager or even to one of the three members of the firm, is a practical guarantee against persecution of any sort.”

Macy’s actively encourages “Industrial recreation” to boost team work and efficiency, avoiding the paternalistic label of “welfare work”. Activities are organized by the self-governing Men’s Club and the Community Club, hosting athletics, a Choral Club, and a Dramatic Club. Dues are nominal, reinforcing the employees’ independence. The store maintains a charming, subsidized summer retreat in Sullivan County for its female workers, complete with a private lake. Store news, including employee literary accomplishments (like those of poet Francis Carlin), is circulated in the monthly house organ, Sparks. Health is prioritized via the Macy Mutual Aid Association (providing sick and death benefits) and an on-site emergency hospital staffed by doctors, dentists, and a chiropodist. For financial assistance, the store operates a savings bank and an interest-free loan fund, accessible after three months of employment, with no security required. The store boasts low labor turnover and high loyalty, with nearly 100 employees having served over 25 years.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • Recreation is organized through clubs (Men’s and Community) to promote efficiency and morale.
  • A subsidized summer home and an on-site hospital serve employee health and recreation needs.
  • The store offers financial security via the Mutual Aid Association and interest-free loans.

Tomorrow

I. In Which Macy’s Prepares to Build Anew

“A great machine of modern business goes ahead quite as much upon the vision and the foresight of the men that guide it as upon their prudence.”

Driven by unending growth, Macy’s prepared in the early 1920s for a monumental expansion, committing to the Herald Square location as the permanent retail center. Plans were drawn for a new 19-story addition, adding 500,000 square feet, to be built while the existing store continued full operations. Architects focused on scientifically separating the three streams of traffic: shoppers, employees, and merchandise. To handle the predicted 20,000 shoppers per hour by 1932, a second double escalator was planned. Employee movement would also utilize a dedicated double escalator system. Merchandise flow was entirely re-engineered: incoming trucks would be lifted via huge freight elevators to the eleventh floor receiving quay. From there, goods would flow down to the vast tenth-floor reserve warehouse and then be distributed to selling floors via six “utility units”. Outgoing packages would drop via spiral chutes to a renovated, oblong basement area designed to sort 75,000 to 90,000 packages daily and load sixty delivery trucks simultaneously.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • Expansion plans aimed to add 50% more space by constructing a 19-story addition.
  • A dual escalator system was planned to handle the projected increase in shopper traffic.
  • Merchandise reception was moved to the eleventh floor via truck elevators to maximize ground floor value.

II. L’Envoi

“The store, itself, does well when it plans so definitely for 1932.”

This final chapter contemplates the distant future, noting the certainty that shopping will endure, even if New York reaches 16 million people. The author speculates on a 1952 Macy’s—a permanent, Gibraltar-like institution—that might span multiple blocks, employ up to 15,000 people, utilize 1,000 trucks, and perhaps include a hundred airplanes for distribution to a far-flung metropolitan area. The image closes on the projected high addition, emblazoned with the “MACY’S” sign, symbolizing its lasting presence.

• Chapter Key Points:
  • The certainty of shopping means Macy’s will endure long into the future.
  • Future projection suggests enormous growth, potentially utilizing air transport.
  • The store is established as a symbol of commercial permanence, a “Gibraltar of a store”.

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Notable Quotes from the Book

1. ” ‘Let the Buyer beware,’ we would read that phrase, today”.
2. “The great department store around which these chapters are written assumes for itself… no monopoly of this virtue of commercial honesty”.
3. “The stage-hands are placing the setting for the New York of yesterday—the New York that already has begun to fade…”.
4. “Now was the complete department store idea fairly launched, for the first time in the history of America, if not in the entire world”.
5. “A Macy truck and wagon is designed to be one of the store’s best advertisements”.
6. “Macy’s attractions are its prices!”.
7. “We believe in explaining things… For we believe that we gain the very best service from the Macy people by not asking them to work in the dark”.
8. “Rule-of-thumb can never again overcome the rules of averages, of percentages or of economic laws”.
9. “The market for workers—like pretty nearly every other sort of market—is… subject to fluctuations”.
10. “The desire for self-expression is never stunted”.

About the Author

Edward Hungerford is the author of The Romance of a Great Store, published in 1922. He is also noted for having written The Personality of American Cities and The Modern Railroad. Hungerford’s professional background clearly centered on large-scale infrastructure, municipal development, and complex organizations, as evidenced by his meticulous detailing of Macy’s internal mechanisms, traffic flows, and strategic city planning. His expertise informs the book’s analysis of how systems and organization superseded earlier “rule-of-thumb” commerce. Hungerford dedicated the work “To the Men and Women of The Great Macy Family”, highlighting his deep appreciation for the human element—the “Fidelity and Interest,” “Enthusiasm and Ability”—that underpinned the institution’s commercial and social worth.

How to Get the Most from the Books

Focus on the evolution of merchandising principles, compare “Yesterday” ethics to “Today” systems, and study the detailed organizational charts and employee management strategies for maximum insight.

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Conclusion

The Romance of a Great Store is more than a simple company history; it is a serious examination of American merchandising ethics and organizational science in the early 20th century. The book successfully immortalizes the vision of its founders—from Rowland Hussey Macy, who instituted honesty and the fixed price, to the Straus family, who ensured its permanency and fought legal battles for the consumer. By detailing the complex systems governing purchasing, distribution, and employee welfare, Hungerford reveals Macy’s as a thoroughly “humanized machine” whose colossal success stemmed from relentless efficiency, moral principles, and a profound commitment to the community of workers who comprise the “Macy Family”. As the store prepared for its next great expansion, Hungerford affirms that Macy’s stands as a testament to strategic foresight and integrity in the heart of the world’s commercial capital.