Great Fortunes: Alexander T. Stewart Part 10
Great Fortunes: Alexander T. Stewart Part 10
The retail store contains fabrics of every description and price. The wife of a millionaire can gratify her fancy here to its utmost limit, while the poor sewing-girl can obtain her simple necessities at the same price which is demanded for them from the rich. In the shawl department, there are “wraps” worth as much as $4,500, but not more than one or two find a purchaser in the course of a year. Shawls at $3,000 find a sale of about twenty a year, and the number of purchasers increases as the price diminishes. The wealthy ladies of New York deal here extensively. One of the clerks of the establishment recently made a statement that a fashionable lady ran up a bill of $20,000 here in two months.
Mr. Stewart, though leaving the details of the retail business in the hands of Mr. Tuller, the general superintendent, yet keeps himself thoroughly informed respecting it, and exercises over it a general supervision, to which its increasing success is due. He knows exactly what is in the house, how much is on hand, and how it is selling. He fixes the prices himself, and keeps them always at a popular figure. He is said to have an aversion to keeping goods over from one season to another, and would rather sacrifice them than do so. He has no dead stock on hand. His knowledge of the popular taste and its variations is intuitive, and his great experience enables him to anticipate its changes.
“There can not be so much selling without proportionate buying, and Stewart is as systematic in the latter as the former. Of late he has not acted personally in making purchases, but has trusted to the system which he organized some years ago, and which he has found to admirably answer as his substitute. He has branch establishments exercising purchasing functions only in Boston and Philadelphia, in the United States; in Manchester, England; and in Paris and Lyons, France. But while these are his agencies, his buyers haunt the marts of the whole world. There is no center of commerce or manufacture of the wide range of articles in which he deals, on either of the continents, where he is not always present by deputy to seize upon favorable fluctuations of the market, or pounce upon some exceptionally excellent productions. He owns entire the manufactory of the celebrated Alexandre kid-glove. He has a body of men in Persia, organized under the inevitable superintendent, chasing down the Astrachan goat heavy with young, from which the unborn kids are taken and stripped of their skins, thus sacrificing two animals for every skin obtained. He rifles Lyons of its choicest silks, the famous productions of Bonnet and Ponson. Holland and Ireland yield him the first fruits of their looms. Belgium contributes the rarest of her laces, and the North sends down the finest of its Russian sables. All the looms of France, England, Belgium, and the United States are closely watched, and the finest fabrics in dress goods, muslins, carpets, and calicoes are caught up the moment the workmen put on the finishing touches. He buys for cash the world over, and is a customer every-where so recognized as desirable that he has his choice of industrial productions, and on more advantageous terms than his rivals can purchase what he leaves. He has been so long in the business, and has become so thoroughly versed in the productions of different looms in different countries, that it is now his practice to select certain mills noted for excellence of work, and take their entire supply, and thus it happens that there are many looms in the busiest haunts of the Old and New Worlds that toil unceasingly on his account.
“By buying thus largely in foreign lands, he is, of course, the largest importer in the nation, and his duties average $30,000 gold per day. Every year his business steadily increases, and there is apparently no practical limit at which it will stop. As prudent in vast affairs as other men are in small, he insures liberally, and has policies renewed every third day throughout the year. But, while leaning upon the insurance companies, he is utterly independent of the banks; he has never asked one of them to ‘carry’ him through a crisis, and should such a contingency arise, there is no bank in the world competent to the task.”
Mr. Stewart is now sixty-eight years old, but looks much younger, being still as vigorous and active, both mentally and physically, as most men of forty-five. He is of the medium size, has light-brown hair and beard, which are closely trimmed. His features are sharp, well cut, his eye bright, and his general expression calm and thoughtful. His manner is reserved, and to all but his intimate friends cold. He dresses with great simplicity, but with taste, and in the style of the day. His habits are simple, and he avoids publicity in all things. Standing as he does at the head of the mercantile interests of the country, he affords a fine example of the calm and dignified manner in which a man of true merit may enjoy his legitimate success, and of the good use he may make of its fruits.
