Business: Shedd

John Graves Shedd, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Marshall Field & Co., died last week in Chicago after an operation for appendicitis.

“I honestly believe that Mr. Shedd is the best merchant in America.”

The late Marshall Field, always autocratic, unyielding, glared at the Federal Commission before whom he was speaking, as if he expected a contradiction. None came. Too much had been spoken, even then, about this John Shedd, about his economy, his executive ability, his uncanny foresight, for the listeners to dispute anything that Mr. Field cared to say.

Born in New Hampshire, that cradle of millionaires, politicians and farmhands, John Shedd worked on his father’s nubbly acres until he was 17, then got a job at $1.50 a week in a general store at Bellows Falls, Vt. It was the sort of store that has been made familiar to everybody as a stage-set for dramas of New England—a long room with a stove in it, a few boxes of sweet crackers, a teamster or two, a cat in a chair, a dingy glass case filled with painted chocolates and striped stick candy. A bell rang when you opened the door, and John Shedd’s employer rose from his rocking-chair to indicate that questions might be addressed to him. Harried by life, the storekeeper distrusted all men, but most of all, those who worked in his store. He never allowed John Shedd to make change for a customer. On the long counter, polished and fragrant with the memory of countless bags of coffee and packages of flour and chocolate pushed across its surface, John Shedd did up his parcel, tool: the customer’s coin, and stood waiting for his boss (who was usually occupied elsewhere) to come and get the change out of the cash-drawer. Time was wasted; customers grew impatient. One day a woman make an urgent petition.

“Can’t you get me the change yourself? I want to catch the stage to Grafton.”

John Shedd yielded. Later that afternoon the suspicious storekeeper, coming up from the cider barrel in the cellar, discharged him. He went to another town, got another job. Five years later he found himself in Chicago asking work from Marshall Field of Field, Leiter & Co.

Marshall Field had been born on a New England farm himself—at Conway, Mass. Restless, he had gone to raw Chicago and had been hired to work for the general mercantile firm of Cooley, Farwell & Co., which was doing a big wholesale business with the towns of the prairies. This was in 1856. Marshall Field became a partner. The firm became Field, Palmer & Leiter. Potter Palmer withdrew and the name was changed to Field, Leiter & Co. Marshall Field became a rich man and became so through two business principles most unusual in the U. S. before the Civil War. He backed up every item of goods he sold with a warranty of its soundness and value and he sold only for “cash.” “Cash” meant the exact day, 30 to 60 days after billing, on which a bill was due, else no more dealings with Field, Leiter & Co.

The company’s integrity and their high values for lower prices made them the greatest wholesalers of dry goods in the U. S-. Later they were to become the standard for retailers to imitate.

It was after the 1871 Chicago fire that John Shedd asked Marshall Field for a job. “I can do anything,” he said. He was a tall, angular, big-eared, eager fellow of 22. Later in life he said: “Think well of yourself. Self-respect never injures your standing with your employer. Without it you are likely to fall into timorous habits.” And he must have been thinking of the way he asked Marshall Field for work. He was hired as stock boy for $10 a week. He saved half his wages regularly.

The Custer Massacre happened in 1876. Avenging troops cleared the Northwest prairie states of Indians, and immigrants trundled in on their Ticonderoga wagons. New country, new customers brought Field, Leiter & Co. new business. The Eastern states were changing into manufactories. Foresight and acumen were needed in all business and, as far as the dry goods business was concerned, John Shedd, who had risen high in the esteem of Field, had these qualities more highly developed than any of his competitors.

He realized that, to insure Marshall Field quality in goods, he must supervise their manufacture. So when he could not buy products that reached his standard, he made them himself. At Zion City, Ill., he got John Alexander Bowie’s disciples to make lace for him. To the Virginia-North Carolina boundary he brought mountaineers to weave cotton and woolen fabrics in mills he built. His buyers bought at first hand in Europe, Africa, Asia, as well as in the Americas. In effect, he created a “vertical” business for his company by controlling raw material, manufacture and sale. No other retail business has done this so thoroughly and so successfully. Marshall Field & Co. (the name was adopted in 1881) now can call itself, “The most complete museum of our present day civilization.”

In 1906, upon the death of Marshall Field, John Graves Shedd be came president of the concern. Three years ago he gave the presidency over to James Simpson and turned more to the things he had theretofore been too preoccupied to accomplish. He had long abandoned bicycling for motor-promenading. Golf he always liked. And then his philanthropies. He donated $100,000 towards the Chicago Y. M. C. A. hotel, $50,000 for the Smith College development fund, and $50,000 to the Art Institute of Chicago. He: gave considerable time to improving the physical appearance of the city. Lastly, to perpetuate his name in worthy fashion, he gave $3,000,000 to build, an aquarium in Chicago, for which he sent a commission to study aquaria abroad—the invertebrate collection at Naples, biological research at Monaco, artificial salinity at Berlin, lighting in London. The Shedd Aquarium, now under construction, will contain 131 exhibition tanks with some of the rarest fish in the world.