Part 15 (1/2)
Dues for the Men's Club are placed at three dollars a year--that surely is a nominal figure. These go toward the development of club activities outside of its actual running expenses (rent, the restaurant, etc.). The gymnasium fee is another three dollars, which is much less than one would pay for a similar facility elsewhere in New York.
The scale of charges for the Community Club is quite different. The dues here are but twenty-five cents a year--its members.h.i.+p is made up mainly of lower-salaried folk--with small extra charges for special activities.
For instance, the Spanish cla.s.s, which is taught by one of the Spanish interpreters in the store and which has a constant attendance of about forty, costs its pupils the very inconsiderable sum of five cents a lesson. The gymnasium charge is kept in a like ratio. There are a few others in addition. The aggregate cost, however, of as many activities as an average employee can take up is of little moment or burden to him or to her--nothing as compared with the sense of independence that goes with the small act of payment.
The Choral Club, under the direction of a competent leader, meets Wednesday evenings in the big recreation room on the third floor of the store, with a usual attendance of about two hundred men and women who are trained in part singing and in chorus work of various sorts. This is not only enjoyable and popular for its own sake but it has an added value in leading toward the organizing of the store's talent for concerts and for musical plays.
And it has such talent. Do not forget that--not even for a pa.s.sing moment. It would be odd, indeed, if a family of five thousand folk did not develop upon demand much real histrionic and artistic ability of every sort. And when such potentialities are fostered and encouraged, the results--well, they are such as to warn Florenz Ziegfeld and the rest of the Forty-second Street theatrical producers to keep a sharp eye, indeed, upon Macy's.
On Monday evenings, the entire winter long and well into the spring, the Dramatic Club meets and here every budding Maxine Elliott or Ina Claire has her full opportunity. On Tuesday there is a get-together evening--one begins to think with all these evenings so neatly filled of the calendar of a real social enterprise--and then one sees the store family at its fullest relaxation. Here was a recent Tuesday night. It was just before Christmas and the store was approaching the annual peak load of its year's traffic. Yet it had no intention whatsoever of relaxing a single one of its social endeavors.
On this particular Tuesday evening our salesgirl--the one whom we saw but a moment ago being inducted into the selling organism of the store--made her first personal acquaintance with the Community Club. Let her tell her own story, and in her own way:
”Up in the recreation room a few hundred of us gathered for a regular party. Some few of us had gone home after store hours for our dinner; the others had had it right in the store's own lunchroom. It surely is great the way that you _can_ get a meal there in Macy's at any time you are staying late--either on duty or on pleasure.
”At about six-thirty the evening's program got under way--so that the many friendly, chattering groups of girls in the big room finally had to simmer down to something approaching silence. Then the Choral Club began singing for us--some good, old-time Christmas carols first, and then some other songs. All of us joined finally in the chorus, leaving the club to carry the difficult parts. They could do that all right, too. Mr. Janpolski, their leader, finally gave us a solo and after that there was a grand march led by our own beloved Marjorie Sidney.
Everybody joined in--not only in body, but in spirit. It was like Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday in the big gym up at Northampton. Messenger girls, college graduates, salesfolk, deliverymen, managers--everyone was just the same in that blessed hour. Distinctions of the store were gone. We were boys and girls--some of us a bit grown up and grayed to be sure, but all with Peter Pannish hearts--having a real party once again.
”The grand march ended in dancing for every one--with a jolly negro at the piano doing his level best to uphold the reputation of his race for really spontaneous music. Finally, after many encore dances, everybody withdrew from the floor and out came Mr. Salek, the director of the Men's Club, and Miss Knowles, doing an almost professional dance. The Castles had very little on this couple--the way Salek lifted his partner and then let her down--slowly, slowly, still more slowly--reminded me of Maurice and Walton. Their performance brought down the house. Of course they had to respond to encores; again and again and again.
”Following this--for Macy's believes that variety is the spice of all life--a Junior recited the unforgetable ”Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house.' She really was a darling. And how Christma.s.sy she looked, with her big b.u.t.terfly sash and her hairbow of scarlet tulle.... Next on the program came dancing--for everybody.
First, however, there was another march, so that each couple received a number--while every little while certain numbers (the couples that held them) were eliminated from the floor. The nicest part about this elimination dance, as they called it, was that instead of only the last couple getting the prize, as is generally done--every couple, as soon as its number was called and it left the floor, went over to a big chimney-top, with a proverbially jolly 'Santa' peering out of it. There Santa gave to each one a little gift, such as a whistle, a stick of candy, or a jolly little rattle. Then, after more dancing, refreshments were served by gaily garbed Junior waitresses. After which the dancing continued until the merry Community Club Christmas dance was entirely over.”
Already I have touched upon the annual vacation of the Macy worker--one week with pay after eight months continuous employment, two weeks after two years, three weeks after five years, and a month after twenty-five years of service. A charming retreat among the hills of Sullivan County, eighty-seven miles from New York and, through the foresight of the management of the store, purchased long ago, provides an ideal vacation spot for the Macy girls who wish to spend their holidays among truly rural surroundings. For this purpose a large farm house and a hundred acres of surrounding land were acquired by Macy's and more than fifty thousand dollars spent in enlarging the house, beautifying the grounds and otherwise making them suitable for their summertime uses. In addition to the big and immaculately white farm house there are three cottages upon the property. As many as sixty-five girls can be accommodated at a single time upon it.
Three jumps or so from the main house and stretched out in front of it is a lake; a regular lake, if you please, big enough for boating and for bathing, although not so large that one of the keen-eyed chaperones may keep her weather eye on those of her charges whose tastes run toward water sports. In this Adamless Eden bloomers and middy blouses are _de rigueur_, and as the few restraints imposed are only those inspired by ordinary good sense, the girls experience the real joys of living.
All of these activities and interests--and many, many more besides--are faithfully chronicled in the Macy house organ, _Sparks_. Here is a monthly magazine--of some sixteen pages, each measuring seven by ten inches--that in appearance alone would grace any newsstand, while its contents almost invariably bear out the attractiveness of its cover designs. Practically the entire publication is prepared by its staff, which, in turn, is composed of members of the Macy family.
House organs, such as this, are, of course, no novelty in the American business world of today. There probably are not less than fifty department-stores alone which are now printing brisk contemporaries of _Sparks_. The internal publications of a house, such as Macy's, have long since come to be recognized as one of its most valuable media for the promotion of morale. It costs money, but it is money well expended.
So says modern business. And modern business ought to know. For it has tested the results. And the house organ long since became one of the really valuable aides.
Here, then, in _Sparks_ is not only a medium in which the Macy folks may come the better to know about one another, a bulletin board upon which the heads of the house may from time to time carry very direct and sincere messages to their big family, but a mouthpiece in which the embryo literary genius may become articulate. And, lest you be tempted to believe that I have permitted simile to carry me quite away from fact, let me show you a single instance--there are a number of others beside--in which a real literary genius has come to bloom underneath the great roof that looks down upon Herald Square:
His pen name is Francis Carlin--but his real name, the one under which he entered Macy's, is James Francis Carlin MacDonnell. Of him _Current Opinion_ but a year or two ago said: ”The writer (Carlin) ... was until a few weeks ago a floorwalker in one of the big department-stores of New York City (Macy's) and was discovered by Padraic Colum. He had his book obscurely printed and it has been un.o.btainable at bookstores until recently.... It has the true Celtic quality. The dedication alone is worth the price of admission: 'It is here that the book begins and it is here, that a prayer is asked for the soul of the scribe who wrote it for the glory of G.o.d, the honor of Erin and the pleasure of the woman who came from both--his mother.'”
Mr. MacDonnell has written two books: this first, _My Ireland_, and more recently the _Cairn of Stones_. That he has great talent is again attested by _The Boston Transcript_ which said recently: ”Mr. Carlin's Celtic poems, ballads and lyrics are nearer the fine perfection of the native poets belonging to the Celtic renaissance than those produced by any poet of Irish blood born in America.”
After which, who may now dare say that genius may not blossom in a department-store? And even were it not for the gaining glory of Carlin, the pages of any current issue of _Sparks_ would show that there is more than a deal of artistic merit in the widespread ranks of the Macy family. The desire for self-expression is never stunted. And the pages of its avenue of expression are read by none more closely than the members of the family who hold the owners.h.i.+p of Macy's.
And yet these men--the heads of the great merchandising house--are not only accessible to their business family through the printed word. They are not standoffish. On the contrary, they are most widely known throughout the store; most reachable, both within their offices and without. Take the single matter of grievances, for a most important instance: A Macy worker may feel that justice on some point or other is being denied him by a superior. In such a case he has immediate recourse to any one of three expedients: he may take his case to the department of training, to the general manager of the store, or to one of the officers of the corporation. As a rule, however, the difficulty can be straightened out in the first of these avenues of appeal, which is an automatic clearing-house for all matters of personnel. The heads of this department have been chosen as much as anything for the sympathy which enables them to review any employee's case intelligently and fairly and for the influence that makes it possible for them to see at all times that full justice is being done. While the fact that the worker, himself, may take the matter to the general manager or even to one of the three members of the firm, is a practical guarantee against persecution of any sort.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SUMMER HOME OF THE MACY FAMILY
Recreation in the modern store stands side by side with education in perfecting the individual employee]