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Coolness & Civics. To end wasteful secrecy in merchandising, Lincoln Filene in 1916 persuaded major U.S. stores to open up their books for the benefit of all, went on to help form Associated Merchandising Corp. for cooperative bulk buying from Europe and Asia (now more than $1.5 billion a year). Lincoln wanted to expand Filene's nationwide by merging with other stores; Edward was stubbornly against it, and eventually dropped out of the company's active management.
Running the company alone, Lincoln helped build Federated Department Stores into what ranks (on first-quarter earnings) as the nation's biggest retailer, adding such stores as Columbus' F. & R. Lazarus Co. (1929), Brooklyn's Abraham & Straus (1929), Manhattan's Bloomingdale Bros. (1930), Houston's Foley Bros. (1949), Dallas' Sanger Bros. (1951). Yet he was never so busy selling that he forgot the workers and society around him. Filene was a leading spirit of the New England Industrial Development Corp. to encourage small businessmen, pumped hard for better schools, wrote three books, was a founder of the American Arbitration Association and served the Government in setting up state job-insurance programs. "I like to tell people that just making money out of a city and its inhabitants isn't the only thing to do." The inroads of age began to tell on Lincoln Filene two years ago. He no longer minded the store. But only when he could no longer recall the crowded days of a life nearly a century long did he retire, and then last month, at 92. One morning last week in his home overlooking a lake at Marstons Mills on Cape Cod, Lincoln Filene, suffering from arteriosclerosis, died quietly, the last of an enterprising generation. At the funeral there was no eulogy; he never believed in them.