by Pamela Cox
On one level, the article was flippant and absurd. On another, Chesterton was clearly articulating his fears and prejudices in a very personal, visceral manner. Selfridge, though not named, took the attack on modern stores to heart. He responded in print four days later, accusing the ‘ignorant’ Chesterton of having a ‘suburban and narrow knowledge of the present-day department store’.17 Unwilling to be silenced, Selfridges’ female staff also took up the cudgels in self-defence. ‘Angry London Shopgirls Reply to an Attack by Mr. G.K. Chesterton: “Entirely Ignorant”’ read the headline in the rival Daily Express.18 They had held a meeting and composed a letter, signed by 180 of them, rebutting Chesterton’s condescending and belittling views, his ‘stigma of contempt’. They described themselves as ‘business women associated with the House of Selfridge’ and wrote, ‘We are proud to say that we feel as women workers we have in our ranks some of the brightest intelligences associated with commerce.’ The letter also outlined the responsibilities they were called upon to undertake, describing the ‘intelligent democratic administration’, the ‘modern business methods’, the educational programme they attended, including a ‘business refresher’, and praised the ‘Staff Parliament or Council where free speech, free thought and general initiative is expected to be shown on all occasions’. They signed themselves: ‘Women Workers, 100, Oxford Street, W1., Feb 1st, 1912’.19
They certainly didn’t sound like poorly trained, dumb, headless mannequins. But Chesterton’s response? A resounding silence. While he did reply to Harry Gordon Selfridge in print, sardonically linking him to vulgarity and pomposity and suggesting that Selfridge did not understand business, he did not deign to reply to the Women Workers of 100 Oxford Street W1, Feb 1st, 1912.
Their boss Harry Gordon Selfridge had pitched up on British shores in the early years of the new century with a conviction that the shop world should be female. As part of his pre-launch publicity he had taken out full-page newspaper advertisements and plastered the walls of the Underground and London buses with his signs; in an era of discreet column advertising, this was written off by many as vulgar and brash. But the ads certainly made his stance clear from the off. One read: ‘This House is dedicated to Women’s Service first of all’, clear testimony to his belief in the influence and economic power of his female customers.
Such sentiments had of course already been articulated in Britain by the early store entrepreneurs: William Whiteley had provided women with ladies’ rooms and refreshment rooms in the 1870s, and when Charles Jenner rebuilt his beautiful Edinburgh emporium, he expressed in stone the important role played by his female customers. Selfridge, however, was to take this much further. While Jenners, Harrods and Browns in Chester were presenting themselves as stores for upper-class women, Selfridge tried to break free from British social strictures and appeal to a wider class spectrum. His advertisements made clear that his was indeed an unintimidating modern walk-around store, the type that Elizabeth Huber Clark so missed on British soil. As Edwardian shopper Olivia explained in her Prejudiced Guide to London shopping, in most shops smartly attired shopgirls and their frock-coated floorwalkers still tended to bully customers. When Olivia wished to view rather than buy a certain shade of ribbon, the shopgirls cried out for all to hear, ‘The lady says she merely wanted to look at it.’20 In contrast, Selfridges was warmly welcoming, suggesting, ‘Why Not Spend the Day in Selfridges?’, offering the public the ‘freedom of the store’ and inviting them in to luxuriate in its modern surroundings. Here customers had no obligation to buy; Selfridge wished them to ‘make the store their headquarters’. If they were then inclined to make a purchase, the prices were low, and kept lower still through the introduction of American bargain-basement sales.
Selfridge felt he instinctively knew his female customers and what they wanted. And his instincts weren’t wrong – though it would take a few years until he was proved right. After the grand opening, women flocked in, at first just to recce the new store. Shop assistant Nellie Elt recalled the first day: ‘Thousands of people streamed past us, staring at us … Very few, it seemed to me, were buying anything.’ Business at first was slower than expected, but within three years Selfridges was beginning to make serious money. Harry Gordon Selfridge’s own flair for showmanship, the popularity of the Roof Garden and the cheap deals available in the Bargain Basement all served to boost earnings, so that by March 1912 trading profits were over £50,000.21
Selfridge believed that the key to unlocking such profits lay with his staff, who were overwhelmingly female. ‘When an assistant is serving a customer the whole reputation of the store is in the hands of that single assistant,’ he explained.22 Consequently, it was worth his while to hire and train good employees. Selfridge brought with him from the United States management methods and motivational techniques that were in many ways more progressive than those prevalent in Britain at that time, and were in turn to influence staff relations throughout the department-store sector. For a start, he rejected the living-in system still very common all around Britain. Staff were allowed to lodge where they liked, and therefore incurred no deductions from their weekly wages. He paid them a little better than elsewhere in the capital23 and introduced training programmes covering merchandise and selling techniques. The store also provided leisure facilities, staff discount schemes and in-house medical services. As we know, other stores had similar initiatives, but the critical difference with Selfridge was the manner in which his naive enthusiasm and showmanship infused both his store and his workers.
In his house rules, in an early mission statement called ‘Spirit of the House’, and in his widely syndicated daily press columns, Selfridge time and again peddled the line that staff job satisfaction was all important. The Guide Book read quite differently from, say, Whiteley’s earlier list of 176 strict house rules and associated fines. Here there were no fines; instead staff were encouraged ‘to look upon work during the working hours of the day as a privilege, as a game … to look upon the bright side of things: originality, loyalty’. His Christmas cards to staff had little mottos and homilies, such as ‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive’ and ‘True success is labour’.24 Staff happiness, according to Selfridge, came from being given responsibilities and having a sense of inclusion in the enterprise. No one was to know their place; instead they were to be assisted in furthering their ambitions. A staff council was set up, probably the first in British retailing, where representatives of each of the 130 departments plus senior staff met to discuss store operations. Selfridge cultivated the idea that ‘merit and merit only’ was the route to advancement, and that any stockboy given the right training might rise high.
So central were his staff to the business – and, he believed, to customers – that Selfridge even published his store’s ‘Personality Tree’ in the London Magazine, showing an assistant (a young woman), a head of department (older woman), the chief of staff (man), then Mr Selfridge at the top.25 This is a deeply revealing diagram, showing that for all his progressive ideas and eloquent sayings, Selfridge was still a man of his time. Despite him repeatedly and vociferously praising his female assistants in public, touting their professional skills and intuitive knowledge of their customers’ needs, even he saw gender as a bar to advancement, his maxim of ‘merit and merit only’ seeming to apply just to his male hires. He was explicit about what is nowadays called the glass ceiling, writing that while ‘there is practically no limit to the heights to which a man of ability might succeed’ in his store, the same could not be said for his female staff: ‘Women, although they might go far, can never attain a commanding position.’26
For most young women, what happened at senior management level didn’t much bother them when they first applied to Selfridges. Becoming head of department was challenging enough in the London shop world; Paquins, for instance, rarely promoted their womenfolk to this level. Miss Olive Fisher started at Selfridges aged sixteen as a junior cashier. Along with the other under-eighteens, she had to at
tend evening classes four nights a week. Each month a buyer would hold a lecture concerning his merchandise and Miss Olive then had to write an essay on the topic. Subjects on the training programmes ranged from ‘The History and Manufacture of Pianos’ to ‘Self-Discipline as a Business Asset’. She and the other shopgirls received marks out of ten for their essays; one shopgirl received only four out of ten one week, another was told to write on one side of the paper only. Miss Olive, however, fared better, enjoying the learning opportunities. ‘I still remember how interesting the lectures were about gloves, linen, glass and china.’ When she received top marks she was invited with her parents and the other students to a strawberry and ice-cream garden party held on the Roof Garden and was presented with two books, both signed by Mr Selfridge.27
Shopgirls’ view of themselves as professional modern businesswomen was clearly in the ascendant, but, as Edwardian cultural icon Olive Christian Malvery admitted, many in London were ‘not exactly pining for Mr Selfridge’ and his new ways. Malvery was an Indian singer and writer, and a lively defender of the ‘new blood’ that Selfridge was introducing:
‘We don’t want any of those horrible American ways here,’ was the critique Malvery heard in high society.
‘To what horrid American ways do you refer?’ she innocently enquired.
‘Oh, well you know what I mean.’
‘No, not really. Do tell me what it is you object to, at Selfridge’s for instance.’
‘It is all that American bluff and getting up large things and making their women workers so independent.’
Malvery would not let this stand. ‘I see; you do not like women workers to be paid well and courteously treated. Is that it?’28
Malvery’s conversation partner would surely have been underwhelmed by other new American techniques Selfridge was introducing to British retail, such as his innovative, dramatic approach to display and window dressing. The traditional British approach was to have ‘massed’ shop windows fully stocked from floor to ceiling, with goods hanging off rails, hooks and wires, taking up every inch of floor, wall and ceiling space. Such ‘stocky’ windows took hours to make up and remained unchanged for several weeks.29 Instead, the windows of Selfridges were more ‘open’ and showed far fewer items, silhouetted against a stark background. At night Selfridge lit his windows up, rather than shuttering them like most stores.
Quickly, though, the pioneering American display methods spread to other stores, strengthening a growing awareness throughout retail of their importance. Good window dressing came to be regarded as ‘as an educator of public taste’, as The Times put it. This had its consequences. Many London traders increased their spend on window dressing to such an extent and so successfully that crowds regularly gathered around attractive displays. On one occasion, retailer Mr W.E. Catesby’s windows proved such a draw that the police were called to control the crowd and Mr Catesby was summoned to appear at the Marlborough Street Police Court. Police began ticketing shops whose windows caused problems. In response, a deputation of shopkeepers and trade journalists met the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, requesting that they be assigned a policeman to keep order, as happened with theatre crowds. The commissioner turned down their application, arguing that unlike stationary, patient theatre crowds, a shopping crowd might be ‘obstinate and cantankerous and refuse to be moved’. On top of this, felt the commissioner, if he agreed, ‘it would not be long before every trader in London would ask for the “walking advertisement” of a London policeman’.30
The early 1910s were the heyday of store opulence, with drapers around the country upgrading their shops to department stores and department stores themselves being given extensive makeovers. In Liverpool, Owen Owen had its entire frontage and interior rebuilt, as did Bainbridge’s of Newcastle, Debenhams in London and smaller stores such as Mawer & Collingham of Lincoln. However, in spite of their beautiful new Edwardian display areas, most traditional shopkeepers still saw their customers very much in old class terms, with the new buildings reflecting this starkly by providing separate entrances for different sections of the community. At Mawer & Collingham the posher ‘carriage trade’ was welcomed at the main doors, while the servant trade had a separate entrance and shop which provided the cheaper Manchester cottons, Bradford wools and heavy-duty boots.31 Bainbridge’s operated in a similar way, as superintendent Walter Brittain recalled: ‘There used to be quite a dividing line and grading of customers.’ The upper and middles classes were served in the French Room, Brittain explained, while artisan types were in the Back Shop. ‘It was amazing how smoothly this segregation worked, each class was comfortable in its own surroundings.’32
The declaration of war in August 1914 put a stop to the shop-fitting and building boom. The nation had more important things to worry about than the style of its shop counters. As The Drapers Record pointed out, ‘To keep calm, to preserve one’s balance … is not only a patriotic duty; it is the policy dictated from the point of view of our business interests.’33 Yet keep calm British customers clearly did not. There had been little planning for the effects of war on the home economy, by either government or business. The Drapers Record complained that ‘panicmongers’ and stupid ‘poltroons’ did not pursue their ‘ordinary avocations’; instead, individuals, as well as big businesses, immediately withdrew cash, advertising and custom across the board. Sales of all items plummeted except for food. As ‘little sums of money’ no longer frequently passed across the counters, day-to-day business was paralysed – or so the president of the Advertising Consultants described: ‘As soon as the circulation of money stopped the industry of the nation received a check.’34 The key economic problem was not reduction of trade with Germany, it was lack of confidence in the home market, the advertisers felt. They called on the press, manufacturers and retailers to promote ‘the restoration to the normal purchasing conditions’.
But there was little prospect of normality. By the beginning of September, The Drapers Record had published a list of hundreds of male workers from wholesale and retail businesses who had already volunteered for the armed forces, surmising that ‘we have every reason to be proud of the small army of men who are temporarily leaving their business duties in order to take their part in defending their country’.35 Recruiting sergeants targeted large stores, promising that men who enlisted together would serve together. Many stores, including grocery chain J. Sainsbury, committed to giving them their jobs back when they returned. The Drapers Record listed Harrods as releasing fifty-seven men, Eaden Lilley in Cambridge twenty, Rockhey in Torquay nine, W.H. Watts in Liverpool eighteen, Draffen & Jarvie in Dundee two, Dickins & Jones thirty-five. By 1915 half a million young men from all industries and all walks of life had enlisted.
With male staff numbers dropping dramatically and custom collapsing in the uncertainties of the first months, many proprietors were forced to dismiss the majority of their remaining staff. On top of this, the War Office demanded that clothiers help supply the army. Despite the patriotic tone of The Drapers Record, drapers themselves responded with reluctance, protesting that such emergency demands would further upset their work patterns. Many drapers’ shops and larger stores, including even the Army & Navy Co-operative Society – known as ‘The Stores’ – point blank refused the War Office requests.36
The government was unimpressed. The Home Office summoned shopkeepers to a meeting, where everyone agreed that the sackings should cease, in order to restore morale. In 1915 with the initial panic over, customers started buying again, and retail profits quickly recovered. Thus in time drapery firms got behind the War Office initiative of supplying the army, with companies such as Mawer & Collingham of Lincoln producing five hundred pairs of khaki trousers a week. Stores now needed to hold on to their staff.
Extraordinarily enough, this challenging time was just the moment that another retailer chose to begin implementing one of the most radical experiments in shopwork. In 1864, Somerset draper John Lewis had opened a small stor
e at 132 Oxford Street, selling silk, wool and haberdashery. A highly principled, irascible man, Lewis had built up his business through five decades of sheer hard work. Now an old man but still going strong, John Lewis had been unperturbed by the arrival of Selfridges, realising that the new kid on the block would bring extra custom to Oxford Street and confident that the John Lewis policy of good value for money and a wide assortment of stock would stand up to the new competition. Unlike other stores who were rattled by the American arriviste, Lewis did not increase his advertising budget and simply stuck to his tried-and-tested business methods. To keep prices down for his customers, he had always worked to a significantly smaller profit margin than his competitors, taking just 25 per cent profit on selling price, while most other drapers took 33 per cent. The policy worked; the store was profitable and if the enterprise came across as at all old-fashioned, so be it, felt the elderly John Lewis.
Unfortunately for his shop assistants, Lewis treated them with the same tenacious rigour. And Philip Hoffman, in his role as officer of the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen & Clerks, clashed with the proprietor time and again. In his autobiography Hoffman painted an eloquent picture of the man Lewis had become. This ‘remarkable man’ represented for Hoffman ‘much of the worst type of employer in the rugged, rather shameless individualist past of the Victorian and Edwardian era’.37 According to him, Lewis had grown tyrannical and eccentric, ‘a fearless, obstinate man’, who forced younger customers to use the stairs in his store rather than the lift if he felt they were fit enough, and was particularly fussy about his female employees’ dress. Young women were to be all in black with high white collars kept up without wire supports. This was not only frightfully old-fashioned, but also an uncomfortable and impractical method of collar-management; he also particularly disliked seeing blonde curly hair – let alone redheads – on his shopfloor.38 When prowling his store, he sometimes took instantly against a certain saleswoman or salesman, asking them a couple of questions about their length of service and then saying, ‘You have been here too long. Go to the Counting House and get your money.’39