news space was devoted to education, and what can be more important? Educational news cannot be dramatized, it is true, but it can be important even when the dramatic elements are missing. Two Plain Dealer reporters devote most of their time to school news. One reporter "covers" the headquarters, and another hunts stories in the schools. Few other metropolitan newspapers cover the school system so adequately, or bring it closer to the reading public. "The school man is frankly suspicious of the reporters', fearful that his policies and methods may be misunderstood or misrepre With some newspapers; like the Plain Dealer, the main purpose is to supply the news of an informative or useful kind; with others the main purpose is to furnish the news that is of the emotional, abnormal, or thrilling type. In fact, newspapers in this country may be divided into two classes, though with countless gradations of merit and grossness in the classes. One class com "An editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy. The range of his power is limited only by the extent of his knowledge, the quality rather than the quantity of his circulation, and the faculty and force which he can bring to the work of government." sented in the newspaper," wrote Fred Charles of the Plain Dealer in a recent article in the Journal of the National Education Association. And why is this? Merely because the school man has had so much experience with the dragoons of the press that he has become accustomed to guarding his utterances. Even now, in some cities, his only visits from the reporters are when a teacher has eloped with the big boy in her class or the principal has been beaten by one of the students, or some scandal or row has been reported. The school man can hardly be blamed for being shy of reporters; he has known only the dragoons. As Mr. Charles writes: This suspicion of the teacher toward the newspaper worker is the greatest obstacle to effective school publicity. For effective school publicity does not consist of an occasional frenzied splurge or campaign to get a bond issue "put over" but a day-by-day presentation of the schools as they really are. The American people believe in, and will support to the limit, their public schools, but their support is predicated upon their understanding. They will vote your bond issues and your tax levies when they are convinced that the welfare of their children is at stake. They will not forever vote money for gingerbread ornaments on schoolhouses, or for purposes which they cannot understand. -W. T. STEAD prises newspapers which recognize that their chief duty is to publish news that will inform the public, and not necessarily thrill. The aim of this first class of newspaper is best expressed in that well-known motto of the New York Times, "All the News That's Fit to Print," though in many cases some of the news that was fit to print only in guarded language actually was printed with a grossness of expression and insinuation that would not have been tolerated a few years previously. The aim of the second class of newspapers is to print the news with the “kick," the "punch," the "pep"-news not as information, but as an intoxicant intended to give a thrill, an emotional effect. LOOKING TOWARD A GOOD FUTURE T IS far better to have too few newspa IT pers than too many. The weak newspaper will not only print stories it might reject or at least use with more discretion if it were stronger, but it will also accept advertisements which ought to be rejected. The American press is undoubtedly the finest and freest in the world, but it could be infinitely finer and freer if it developed a conscience to match its power. Its reversions to barbarism now are too frequent, especially in the gathering of news. It has developed a conscience in its presentation of advertising much more rapidly than in its presentation of news. There is no doubt that it will develop that conscience in time, and that its dragoons will learn to use their heads more and their feet less. Do You Buy From a "Chain"? Three Billion Dollars Spent Last Year in These Stores. LL those that patronize some kind of chain store, please raise their hands." A If the hundred million Americans voted on that question, a veritable forest of hands would be raised. And the sunlight would be reflected from a good many millions of dollars' worth of diamond rings, too, for the patrons of the cash-and-carry stores are by no means confined to the people who have to count the pennies. Nearly three billions of dollars' worth of goods were bought in these stores last year. One dollar of every twelve that was spent over the retail counters went into the till of a chain store. The idea of a chain of stores under one management is older than most people realize, though the man who originated it died only seven years ago. George H. Hartford was engaged in the hide and leather business in New York before the Civil War, and had added tea as a side line in his shop. Just why he should add tea to his stock of leather is not clear. In any event, the tannin in his tea sold better than the tannin in his leather-possibly his customers found it more palatable under the belt than in it-and he was by way of becoming a considerable tea merchant when he hit on the idea that made him a pioneer as well as a very rich man. If tea was profitable in one shop, he argued, why should it not be twelve times as profitable in twelve shops? That idea came to Mr. Hartford in 1859. Within a very few years he had twenty-five shops in New York and Brooklyn. And when he died, in 1917, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, which was George H. Hartford and his idea turned into a corporation, was operating 3,232 stores. Last year (1923) there were more than 10,000 A & P stores scattered through every one of the fortyeight states, and they sold $302,000,000 worth of groceries. This chain is not only the oldest, but also by far the largest of all. Just twenty years elapsed, after the first chain of stores was founded, before another was started that embodied any additional new idea. In 1879, Frank W. Woolworth opened the first successful five-and-ten-cent store. His system is now represented in every town of 8,000 inhabitants or over, in every state in the Union. Last year's sales were $193,000,000. It is second in volume of business. These two pioneers had all the fundamental ideas that underlie the success of all their followers. But some other men have given a distinctive twist to some of these ideas, so that the principles that made these two pioneer chains successful have now been applied to cigars, candy, shoes, hats, clothing, dry goods, drugs, bakeries, restaurants, hotels, theaters, motion pictures, radio apparatus, and barber shops. T THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE HE first of these principles, clearly, is that the merchant shall take his store to his customers. Mr. Hartford realized that there was a certain distance beyond which people cannot or will not go to buy tea. One store at the center of that radius would absorb all the trade it could hope for. Every merchant in history had encountered this same problem, and before Mr. Hartford's day it had been solved in one of three ways: The merchant had put his shop on his back and gone forth as a peddler, or he had contented himself with such trade as came to him where he was, or he had been a genius named A. T. Stewart. THE FIRST DEPARTMENT STORE HIS modern everything that most people eat, except fresh meats; and he went so far in Mr. Woolworth's direction as to cut out both credits and deliveries and so become a "cash-and-carry" business. The success was success merchandisingin a genius of a dew of an original idea, followed through by a Yorker. He invented the department store. Before his day, every merchant was a specialist. He sold dry-goods or he sold men's hats or he sold shoes. Mr. Stewart's idea was that the way to get more trade in his store was to add new lines of goods. The same woman that wanted dry-goods wanted many other things besides, such as soap, perfumes, kitchen ware, and so forth. So he made his store the center of a radius within which people would come to buy, not one article, but any one of a hundred articles. By this device, he increased very considerably the number of his patrons, and also the number of times they entered his store, because of the variety of goods they could buy there. It is interesting to observe that the Woolworth stores are patterned upon the Stewart idea: they are simply department stores with a ten-cent limit on the price of goods. The department idea was not original with Mr. Woolworth. The tencent limit was. Mr. Hartford, however, developed the older idea of specialty shops in another way. He stuck to his specialty, tea. Instead of multiplying the specialties as Mr. Stewart did, he multiplied the shops. Both schemes worked. One produced the department store; the other produced the chain store. Mr. Woolworth combined the two ideas. His stores are a chain of department stores. To that extent, they are imitative of the Stewart and Hartford man of iron determination who yet kept an open mind and was willing to change his methods when change was proven valuable. The Woolworth success was the success of a group of ideas that were complete almost from the first and have required almost no modification since. Twenty-five years ago, women spoke of going to "the tea store" when they meant the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company's nearest shop. The name was accurate then, for the whole stock consisted of tea, coffee, spices, and sugar-and crockery. But the crockery was not primarily for sale. It was given away as a premium, to stimulate the sale of tea. Customers received a receipt for the purchases of tea, coffee, and spices (not sugar), and the receipts could be applied, at a fixed percentage, to selections of crockery, glassware, and china. To-day, the universal name for one of these shops is "the A & P store." They still sell tea, coffee, and spices, but they no longer handle crockery. They have added fresh vegetables and nearly all the standard kinds of packaged foods; but they now give no premiums, no credit, and no delivery. Thus the A & P stores represent an evolution in methods. Only the "chain" idea remains of the original ideas of their founder, but that one idea is enough to make his name famous in the history of merchandising. FROM FARM TO TEN-CENT STORE ideas. But Mr. Woolworth added three ON THE other hand, all the ideas that ideas of his own that were very important: the ten-cent limit, cash sales, no delivery. It is good evidence of Mr. Hartford's shrewdness that he ultimately adopted part of the Stewart idea and part of the Woolworth idea, with great success. He went so far in Mr. Stewart's direction as to make his stores stock practically have made the Woolworth stores successful were in Frank W. Woolworth's head when he was twenty-five years old and they were in practical operation before he was thirty. The farmer boy from up-state New York, whose chief pleasure as a child was to "play store" in the family sitting room after the evening 214 The Rise of the Woolworth Stores chores were done, was a born retail salesman, and at the earliest opportunity displayed his extraordinary understanding of the psychology of the shopper. Out of a commercial school at nineteen, he worked three months for no pay in the dry-goods store of Moore & Smith, at Watertown, New York, and then, beginning at $3.50 a week, he worked up to $6 a week at the end of two and a half years. Broken health sent him back to the farm for a couple of years. In the summer of 1877, he was back at Moore & Smith's at $10 a week. The following year he was asked what more he could do to earn his salary. That challenge was the beginning of the five-cent store. He He placed a sewing table in a conspicuous place in the store, put on it a miscellaneous assortment of small articles that had not sold very fast, and placed a placard amongst them reading, "Your choice, 5 cts. each." Nearly every article on the table sold the first day. The stock was renewed, and the five-cent table proved its power to sell goods continuously. Within a few months, young Woolworth had persuaded his employers to trust him with $300 worth of stock, with which he started a five-cent store at Utica. It was a failure. But his faith in the idea was still strong, and he at once persuaded Moore & Smith to help him to try again. In June, 1879, he opened the five-cent store at Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was an instant success and is still in operation to-day, after more than forty-five years. Ten-cent articles were soon added, new stores were started, and in 1886 Mr. Woolworth made New York his executive and purchasing headquarters. The whole theory and practice of the low-price department chain store had been worked out in less than ten years. It is an interesting aside to observe that Mr. Woolworth helped each of his old employers separately to start five-andten-cent stores, besides helping his fellow employee at Moore & Smith's, F. M. Kirby, his brother C. S. Woolworth, and his friend E. P. Charlton, all to start independent chains. Years later, in 1912, he took them all back into the F. W. Woolworth Company, except Mr. Smith, who had sold out and retired. It is worth observing further that every officer, director, purchasing agent, district manager, and store manager has worked up from the bottom within the company, beginning either in the cellar of a store breaking open shipments of goods or on the floor selling them behind the counter. The only exception to this rule of inside promotion is the man in charge of the freight business of the company, who had to be got with a ready-made experience of railroading. The likenesses and the differences of the Woolworth chain and the Hartford chain will tell pretty much the whole story of the reason for the phenomenal success of this method of doing business. FOUR POINTS HE first point of similarity is low THE price. Any article sold in one of these stores can almost certainly be bought cheaper there than anywhere else in the same community. The reason, of course, is the enormous purchases of each article made by these chains, which permit the manufacturer to produce it at a much lower unit cost. For example, the Woolworth Company bought and sold in one year 20,000,000 pieces of enamelware, 54,000,000 handkerchiefs, and 90,000,000 pounds of candy. No independent store could hope to offer the manufacturers of these goods such a large and steady market, or to get such a low price from them in consequence. The second point of similarity is the distinctive appearance of the store"you can tell one as far as you can see it." This distinctive store-front has saved the chains millions of dollars in advertising. They advertise themselves, and every store in a chain advertises all the rest. This idea is, of course, carried out in the window-display and in the interior arrangement of the store. This saving is translated into lower prices. The third point of similarity is that the goods must "sell themselves." There are no duplications of brands, or varieties of qualities, to choose from in a Wool worth store, and very few in an A & P store. The customer can see at a glance what is offered, and takes it or leaves it. Fewer clerks, therefore, can handle more business, and this saving can, in turn, be translated into lower prices. not stopped going yet. How fast and how far they went may be gathered from the following tabulations of the number of stores in the two largest chains, and the volume of business they did, in four representative years: The fourth point of similarity is the location of the store. Where the traffic is densest in that part of a town or city Year 1915 where similar goods are sold, look for the chain store and you will certainly find it. THE BATTLE OF PRICE AND SERVICE THE HE silent battle that is going on in the field of retail merchandising can be summarized in a phrase: It is a battle between Price and Service. The chain store is fighting under the banner of Price; the department store and the independent retailer are fighting under the banner of Service. The older types of merchants trust to personal relations with their customers, the widest possible choice of brands and qualities for any one article, the convenience of delivery service, the accommodation of credit, and numberless devices to serve the comfort of their customers, such as rest rooms, banking and postal service, free concerts, radio programs, and the dozens of other evidences of consideration and usefulness that make a particular store occupy almost a position of affection in the regard of its customer. The chain store, on the contrary, offers the minimum range of choice for any one article, no personal sales solicitation, no conveniences or accommodations, but puts its whole strength into providing the most quantity 66 1920 ATLANTIC & PACIFIC 1,726 stores $44,441,000 sales 4,508 1923 10,000 235,303,000 302,880,000 F. W. WOOLWORTH COMPANY Of these two showings, that of the Atlantic & Pacific looks the more remarkable, but probably the Woolworth showing really is. Everything about the economic upheaval of the last ten years was favorable to this growth of A & P, whereas most of the same events were unfavorable to Woolworth. At any given moment, the price of foodstuffs is dear or cheap only by comparison with somebody else's price. A & P could maintain its competitive advantage against other grocery stores in wartime as well as at any other time. And having gone on a cashand-carry basis in 1912, it had a large part of the grocery-buying public used to an idea which the War made both an economy and a patriotic service to the individual consumer. 720,000 TEN-CENT RINGS for the lowest price or the best quality ON THE other hand, Woolworth and obtainable at any given low price. In this battle of Price against Service, the World War gave Price a tremendous advantage. With the purchasing value of the consumer's dollar descending rapidly from 100 cents in 1914 to only 56 cents in 1920, the great middle class, whose incomes increased in no such proportions as those of either labor or capital, was glad to forego much of Service for the sake of Price. The middle-class housewives went over to the chain stores by the millions in those years. And they have the other "five-and-tens," with their fixed price limit, were in exactly the position of the "white-collar" clerk with a fixed income-many things they could formerly afford jumped out of reach in price. All the five-and-tens except Woolworth had to raise the price-limit on many articles and cut down the number of items they sold. Woolworth was strong enough in buying power to hold to the ten-cent maximum and to replace prohibitive items with others it could afford to carry. An example of this potency of a tremendous buying power is the case of a |