JOHN WANAMAKER

Otago Witness, Issue 3595, 6 February 1923, Page 25

JOHN WANAMAKER

ERRAND-BOY TO MERCHANT PRINCE. At the age of 84 Mr John Wan a maker, widely known in America as the "Department Store King," who, beginning life as an errand bay in a hook store, ultimately made an enormous fortune and held office as Post-master-general in President Harrison’s Cabinet,diecT last month in Philadelphia, his naive city. The son of a hrickniaker, his early years were a time of hard struggle and want. At the age of 11, after walking the street# homeless and penniless, lie found employment as a messenger in a book store at 6s a week. Then he got au engagement as a clothing salesman, and having saved JE4OO went into business with his brother-in-law, Nathan Brown. The concern, a clothing house, had very modest beginnings, and it is said that the partners themselves trundled part of their stock to the store in wheelbarrows. Their first day’s takings were 24.67d01. They spent 24d0l in adveitising and the remaining 67 cents they saved for change the next day. Enterprise and originality of method marked Mr Wanamnker from the beginning, and the new methods he introduced proved popular, so that in 1868, when Mr Brown died, tlm» house had taken a leadfng place in tlie trade and was widely known for its lilieral adveitising on a scale which few businesses in the country equalled at that time. The Philadelphia store was rapidly enlarged, ltew departments were add'd to the original clothing shop, and in 1994 Mr Wanamaker had to rebuild it on a very large soale so that for long it was, with over 15 acres of selling space, claimed to be the largest in tb» world. Meanwhile, Mr Wanamaker had extended his activities to New York. There, in promises occupying a whole block fronting Broadway, and considered at the time “f their erection to lie the most extensive a. I most wonderful place of the kind in i’.« world, Mr A. T. Stewart had made th« greater part of his colossal fortune. After his death his trustees for several years attempted to carry on the business on lines the founder had laid down, and their failure for a time considerably cl ; stur!>ed the comae pf shopping in New York. Mr Wanamaker bought the stock, took charge of the house, and, conducting it on the same system ** that which hud worked so well in his parent establishment, in Philadelphia, carried it to a like success, and made it one of the leading trading institutions in the city. But in America the name of Wanamaker was associated as intimately with charitable works as with the vast emporia in Philadelphia and New York, where a person could enter, listen to the organ, hear the singing of 500 voices, read a newspaper, write letters to In's friends, and walk from one department to another without a single request from a member of the staff to know/ his !m#iness. John Wanamaker believed in building men as well as business, and to that end established a university of trade within hi# great store, where boys and girls, while earning a livelihood, were made more efficient for the struggle of life.