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It was after the 1871 Chicago fire that John Shedd asked Marshall Field for a job. "I can do anything," he said. He was a tall, angular, big-eared, eager fellow of 22. Later in life he said: "Think well of yourself. Self-respect never injures your standing with your employer. Without it you are likely to fall into timorous habits." And he must have been thinking of the way he asked Marshall Field for work. He was hired as stock boy for $10 a week. He saved half his wages regularly.
The Custer Massacre happened in 1876. Avenging troops cleared the Northwest prairie states of Indians, and immigrants trundled in on their Ticonderoga wagons. New country, new customers brought Field, Leiter & Co. new business. The Eastern states were changing into manufactories. Foresight and acumen were needed in all business and, as far as the dry goods business was concerned, John Shedd, who had risen high in the esteem of Field, had these qualities more highly developed than any of his competitors.
He realized that, to insure Marshall Field quality in goods, he must supervise their manufacture. So when he could not buy products that reached his standard, he made them himself. At Zion City, Ill., he got John Alexander Bowie's disciples to make lace for him. To the Virginia-North Carolina boundary he brought mountaineers to weave cotton and woolen fabrics in mills he built. His buyers bought at first hand in Europe, Africa, Asia, as well as in the Americas. In effect, he created a "vertical" business for his company by controlling raw material, manufacture and sale. No other retail business has done this so thoroughly and so successfully. Marshall Field & Co. (the name was adopted in 1881) now can call itself, "The most complete museum of our present day civilization."
In 1906, upon the death of Marshall Field, John Graves Shedd be came president of the concern. Three years ago he gave the presidency over to James Simpson and turned more to the things he had theretofore been too preoccupied to accomplish. He had long abandoned bicycling for motor-promenading. Golf he always liked. And then his philanthropies. He donated $100,000 towards the Chicago Y. M. C. A. hotel, $50,000 for the Smith College development fund, and $50,000 to the Art Institute of Chicago. He: gave considerable time to improving the physical appearance of the city. Lastly, to perpetuate his name in worthy fashion, he gave $3,000,000 to build, an aquarium in Chicago, for which he sent a commission to study aquaria abroad—the invertebrate collection at Naples, biological research at Monaco, artificial salinity at Berlin, lighting in London. The Shedd Aquarium, now under construction, will contain 131 exhibition tanks with some of the rarest fish in the world.