retail industry – Ferret Research, Inc.

The Campaign for Early Christmas Shopping

by Mary Goljenboom

In the 1890s, as today, stores were often packed with shoppers in the days leading up to Christmas, lured by sale prices and special merchandise. At that time, however, the shopping season only spanned the few weeks before the holiday. Merchants often did not have all their holiday merchandise available until mid-December. Shoppers waited until a few days before Christmas—and especially Christmas Eve—to make their selections and have them packaged and sent to the recipient, with delivery expected before Christmas. This consumer behavior put tremendous pressure on retail employees, and interfered with their own holiday celebrations.

It took a concerted social movement to make store management change their policies and for consumers to buy-in. Ironically the change has led to Black Friday and shopping madness on Thanksgiving Day. But the story of that social movement also illustrates what needs to happen in our own time to cause change for modern workers.

The movement was started by a group of middle- and upper-class women interested in changing the working conditions of women and children with jobs in retailing. At the time there was no minimum wage, no maximum number of hours to the work day or week (and, therefore, no overtime compensation), and no limits on child labor. While some labor organizers were working to improve conditions through unionization, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Maud Nathan, and other like-minded women believed in another strategy—the power of the purse. They reasoned that consumer demand dictated the policies of employers and, therefore, consumer demand could force change to those policies. In 1891, these women organized themselves into the Consumers’ League of the City of New York (CLCNY).

Maud Nathan, who became president of the group in 1896, explained one tactic:

The majority of employers are virtually helpless to maintain a high standard as to hours, wages and working conditions under the stress of competition, unless sustained by the cooperation of consumers.

A woman who joins our league agrees to shop early in the day. She does not insist that her goods shall be delivered on the same day, declining to receive anything after 6 pm. This enables the delivery men and errand boys to finish their labors early. A member of our league does her Christmas-shopping early. She avoids shopping in the evening and on Saturday afternoons. She does not even ring up the grocer or the butcher by telephone on Saturday afternoons and order goods.

Another tactic used by CLCNY was to create and publicize a list of merchants who met the league’s criteria for fair working conditions; league members and sympathetic consumers (who may have seen it in the newspapers) would then patronize those businesses. The league actively investigated conditions by visiting stores, interviewing managers, and separately seeking verification or contradiction from workers. The list was called the White List for it was the opposite of blacklisting merchants. Eleven retailers, including Lord & Taylor, were on the league’s first White List in 1891. Four years later there were 31 including John Wanamaker, Lord & Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, and F.A.O. Schwarz.

As the CLCNY investigated and reported on workplace conditions, they realized the particular burden the Christmas holiday, particularly Christmas Eve shopping, placed on workers. After a twelve- or fourteen-hour selling day, shelves needed to be restocked, goods packaged for delivery, and deliveries made (gifts were almost never sent early at this time), keeping employees—including children—working far into the night.

In typical league fashion, Maud Nathan’s CLCNY fashioned a multipronged approach, reaching out to retailers and consumers. It encouraged White List merchants to close early on Christmas Eve. For instance, eight days before Christmas 1898, White-List-member Wanamaker’s started announcing in its holiday advertising that it would close early (at 7 pm instead of 10 pm) on Christmas Eve. The next year, Wanamaker’s ran an ad explicitly stating that they were closing early on Christmas Eve so “the thousands of us who will have helped with your good Christmas can get ready for our own.”

The league also discouraged evening hours during the Christmas shopping season and encouraged merchants to display all holiday merchandise earlier than the few weeks just before Christmas, as was the custom, so shoppers could make their selections early. “We found that just as soon as demand for these gifts was made, supply was forthcoming,” Nathan wrote in her book on the league, Story of an Epoch-Making Movement.

Finally, CLCNY, in its annual appeal to members and supporters, urged them to shop early at the White List stores.

Over the next decade these tactics became a campaign to promote early Christmas shopping.

The league amended its fairness standards to cover the evening hours. To comply, a merchant must “not remain open after 7 pm more than four evenings between December 15^th and December 25^th,” and not remain open “later than 9 o’clock on these four evenings.” The White List was divided into two categories: “Stores not open in the evening before Christmas” and “Stores open in the evening before Christmas” (in 1908, there were 34 stores closed in the evening compared to 14 open). Members pledged to shop early. The White List was printed in newspapers, magazines, and theater programs.

Nathan made speeches, gave interviews, wrote opinion pieces and letters to the editor. She set up a Committee on Arousing Public Sentiment. They produced thousands of flyers, posters, letters, and postcards with the appeal to shop early. These were distributed through churches and synagogues (some 15,000 in 1907 alone), in schools and clubs. At CLCNY’s urging, they were also used as talking points by clergy and teachers. Women’s clubs signed pledge cards to complete shopping before December 15^th. In 1909, from November 30^th to December 14^th, a 25×30 foot banner was hung over 23^rd St. between 5^th and 6^th Avenues. It read Do your Christmas shopping before December 15^th to help the workers in the shops and factories. [signed] Consumers League of the City of New York.

The movement and the Consumers’ League spread nationwide. Habits changed. Merchants displayed their goods in November and, in some cases, October. CLCNY reported proudly in 1906 that “one merchant sent notices in October to all of his charge customers, informing them that his full Christmas stock would be on exhibition by October 29^th , and that selected goods would be reserved for later delivery if purchased before December 10^th.”

In her memoir, Maud Nathan wrote with pride “No longer do shoppers feel that they must wait until the hurried last days before the holiday. . . .Each year holiday goods are displayed earlier and earlier to meet an ever-increasingly early demand.” If she was here today, she would protest shopping hours on Thanksgiving Day. Or maybe start another movement.

Sources
Story of an Epoch-Making Movement by Maud Nathan via Haithi Trust Digital Library

The San Francisco Call. 27 May 1902 via Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers at the Library of Congress

New-York Tribune. 28 Jan. 1894 via Chronicling America

The New York Sun. 16 Dec. 1898 via Chronicling America

New-York Tribune. 15 Dec. 1899 via Chronicling America

Volumes of the Annual Reports of the Consumers’ League of the City of New York via Haithi Trust Digital Library

Hiring the Best

by Mary Goljenboom

To make the best begin with the best . . .

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon was the head of advertising and publicity at New York’s Gimbels department store in the 1940s and early 50s. Her policy was to only hire Phi Beta Kappas for copywriting jobs.

She wrote in her book Macy’s, Gimbels, and Me:

At Gimbels, we offered hard work, stern training, challenge and opportunity, and, ultimately, some pretty handsome cash rewards. But first, training and work. We wanted hustlers and scramblers, the type that takes on tough problems for fun.

There are many people like that, and they don’t have to have college degrees. College degrees do not guarantee brilliance. . . . It is true, however, that college does provide some kind of rough sorting system for brains. It was on the latter theory that we adopted our recruiting policy.

Fitz-Gibbon summed up her hiring policy quoting an old slogan for Campbell’s Soup “To make the best begin with the best . . .”

Her method comes to mind because of the report “Moving the Goalposts,” recently published by the labor analytics firm Burning Glass Technologies. The firm found that an increasing number of employers demand a bachelor’s degree for jobs that previously did not require it. Burning Glass reached its conclusions by comparing “the education levels of workers currently employed in an occupation – a measure of past employer preferences – with the education levels employers are currently demanding for the same occupation.”

Why the change? The report says there are two common explanations.

Some jobs have become more complex and require more skills.
Employers are being more selective, favoring more highly educated workers.

The hiring practices of Bernice Fitz-Gibbon fit precisely under explanation #2.

Sources
Macy’s, Gimbels, and Me: How to Earn $90,000 a Year in Retail Advertising by Bernice Fitz-Gibbon (Simon and Schuster, 1967)

Moving the Goalposts: How Demand for a Bachelor’s Degree is Reshaping the Workforce by Burning Glass Technologies (September 2014), http://www.burning-glass.com

Young-Quinlan Reflections

by Mary Goljenboom

Finding pieces of women’s business history sometimes requires that you look up.

For instance, in downtown Minneapolis, if you stand on the Nicollet Mall outside the Target store and look across the street, you’ll see the historic Young-Quinlan Building. Look up above the third floor windows and you will see “Elizabeth C. Quinlan”, the name of the businesswoman who built both the building and the business that was housed in it.

exterior of the Young Quinlan Bldg, Minneapolis,

Young-Quinlan Company opened its doors in March 1895 as Fred D. Young & Company, selling women’s clothing. Fred Young had left his position as manager and buyer for the cloak department of another popular Minneapolis store to start his own business. Elizabeth Quinlan joined Young in his new venture. She was well-known to customers, judging by Young’s mention her in pre-opening publicity and advertising. In 1903 her name was added to the business.

Young and Quinlan’s great innovation was to stock their shop with high quality, ready-to-wear clothing at a time when most clothing was made individually by dressmakers. The team also benefited from the growing personal wealth and affluence created by burgeoning Minneapolis and St. Paul businesses such as Pillsbury, General Mills, and the Northern Pacific Railroad. To attract upper-income customers, the Young & Co.’s opening day ad announced “the finest line of imported and domestic cloaks, mantles, suits, separate skirts, and waists ever seen” in Minneapolis. According to Elizabeth Quinlan, they sold out most of their merchandise on their first day. And they never strayed from stocking the finest.

By the time the Young-Quinlan Building was opened in 1926, Elizabeth Quinlan had been with the company for more than thirty years. She had been sole owner and president since the death of Fred Young in 1911. The business grew significantly so that by the 1920s, Quinlan saw its need for more space. She purchased the land at Nicollet Avenue and Ninth Street South for $1.25 million; the $1.25 million she needed to erect the building was financed by issuing bonds (which sold quickly because her credit was so good). The elegant new Young-Quinlan building was filled with walnut fixtures, stairs, cathedral windows as well as modern conveniences like a 250-car parking garage and elevators. It reflected the success and taste of Elizabeth C. Quinlan, who put her name on the Nicollet facade, above the third floor windows.

Quinlan sold Young-Quinlan Company in 1945, and it lasted until 1985. The landmark Young-Quinlan Building today prominently houses J.B. Hudson jewelers. Reflected in the glass door into Hudson’s, you can catch Target’s bulls-eye logo. Young-Quinlan’s merchandising innovation of providing women with ready-to-wear clothing eventually revolutionized the apparel industry and led to the rise of mass merchandisers like Target. It’s a glimpse of the future reflected from the past.

Y-Q Target bullseye