GROWTH OF A GREAT HOUSE.

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panic of 1857 was unsettlement. The growth of the country was tremendous the crops were increasing enormously, and the stream of immigration, increasing the population and the products of the country to an unheard-of extent, taxed every avenue of trade to the last degree. To do business safely amid the changing life of a new country, where men were poor one day and rich the next, and where few took time or had the prudence to ascertain from day to day where they stood, required rare abilities and a "level head." The whole tendency of business at such a time is speculative. To be conservative is well-nigh impossible. Marshall Field had a conservative mind; he was cool, careful, calculating, prudent. To such a man a training in the midst of such conditions was invaluable, and it helped him in great degree to form the character which became the basis of such great success.

Over this chaos of unhealthy growth, speculation, and unsettlement the panic of 1857 swept like a tornado. Of the prominent business houses of Chicago one of the survivors was that of Cooley, Farwell & Co., and the lessons which were received in that time of trial made Marshall Field indispensable to the house he served. By 1860 he had worked his way up to the position of junior partner. Then came the flush times of the war, and the unsettlement of financial conditions produced by a fluctuating currency. But such conditions as these, which, in a man of less steadiness, would have produced a tendency toward speculation, worked exactly the other way with Marshall Field. As the temptations to reckless dealing multiplied, he grew more cautious and careful. While everybody else was expanding credits, he was restricting them. Safety was the first condition insisted upon, and the result was to establish the house upon a basis which nothing could shake.

In 1865 the firm was re-organized, and Mr. Field, who had for some time been the real head, became so in name as well, the title of the firm being changed to Field, Palmer & Leiter. Two years later, with the withdrawal of Mr. Palmer, the firm was changed to Field, Leiter & Co., the guiding and controlling spirit of the house remaining still the same.

After the war the life of the West exhibited still the same conditions. In those well-remembered years of expansion and speculation preceding the panic of 1873, the great firm of which Mr. Field was the head went on the steady, safe course which was inevitable under his control. Their business grew even more rapidly than that of others, although Mr. Field had applied to it conditions. which many in the same line of business believed to be absolutely preventive of growth. At a time when other houses were extending almost unlimited credit to their customers, and themselves buying on a similar basis, he restricted credits absolutely to thirty and sixty days, and required absolute promptness in the meeting of accounts when due. This was of itself sufficiently novel; but a still more novel feature was that of paying cash for all purchases, thus restricting the

credit which he took even more rigidly than that which he gave to buyers. Nor could he be tempted to speculate upon the credit of his house in other ways. He absolutely refused to sell goods of inferior character, no matter what the inducements offered. He insisted upon practically guaranteeing the quality of all goods sold; and this, with the low prices which a practical cash system enabled him to make, drew to his house the cream of the trade from a large part of the entire West.

In 1871 came another great blow, but of a different kind. This was the

fire which almost entirely destroyed the city of Chicago. Mr. Field was, of course, well insured; no man of his well-known prudence would neglect that; but in this emergency insurance itself failed, for so many of the companies were wiped out by the disaster that a comparatively small part of the insurance had was available.

"What next?" was the question on thousands of lips, as men stood gazing on the smoking ruins of Chicago. With Marshall Field it was a question of the best thing available. Few buildings of any kind were left standing; but

AFTER THE GREAT FIRE.

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at the corner of State and Twentieth streets were some horse-car sheds which had been spared by the fire. While the smoke was still rising from the ruins of the great city, Mr. Field hired these sheds, and began to fit them up for the accommodation of the dry-goods business. At the same time gangs of men were set to work clearing away the ruins of the burned stores of the firm, and erecting on them new buildings for permanent use. In the next year the new stores were ready for occupancy. In rebuilding a great improvement had been, made by separating the retail from the wholesale department, giving to each a building adapted to its own especial needs.

On the heels of the fire came the great panic of 1873; but the house of

Marshall Field & Company passed through it unscathed. It was hard to ruin a house which owed nothing, and whose customers had paid all bills up to within two months. The long-credit concerns, almost without exception, went down in the crash, but Mr. Field's house stood more firm than ever.

In the years that followed, the business grew steadily. The wholesale department especially expanded, until in 1885 it was necessary to build once.

In that year was begun a building of granite and sandstone which is to-day one of the finest wholesale dry-goods establishments in the world. To the retail store, building after building has been added on the State street side, and later a magnificent annex at Wabash avenue and Washington street. In

1865 Mr. Field's firm did a business aggregating $8,000,000; in 1892 the figures had risen to $70,000,000.

In 1881 Mr. Leiter withdrew from the firm, and the name became Marshall Field & Company. It consists of Mr. Field and eight junior partners. All of these have grown up in the house. The store is a great school, which has furnished from its graduates not only the heads of the business itself, but also heads for many other businesses throughout the country.

"Glancing over the hundreds of men in the wholesale department yester

day," says a Chicago reporter, "the writer saw a splendid display of bright young faces. Scarcely an employee in the building could boast of forty years of life, and gray hairs were not in line at all. With scarcely an exception, every man in a responsible position has grown up with the house, and won his spurs by merit; and in a number of cases the spurs carry from $10,000 to $30,000 per year salary with them. It is in a great measure true of Marshall Field & Company's employees that they are raised in the house,' and among them the great merchant has found his most loyal friends and ablest counsellors."