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.