The Auerbach Will (28 page)

“Charles,” she laughed, struggling in his grip, “the neighbors—”

“To hell with the neighbors. You're going to be rich!”

Sometimes, even all these years later, Essie Auerbach can still experience the dizzy feeling of being twirled about in that wild dance.

Fourteen

Early in the year 1915, most of the talk in the newspapers was of the growing intensity of the Great War in Europe. German U-boats had begun their blockade of Great Britain, and the British navy had attacked the Dardanelles to prevent the Germans, who had seized control of Turkey, from blocking supplies to Russia by way of the Bosporus and the Black Sea. In April of that year, in the second battle of Ypres, the Germans introduced poisonous chlorine gas to modern warfare, and left the French colonial troops choking and fleeing in disarray. In May, the Cunard passenger liner
Lusitania
was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland, and sank in less than twenty minutes, with great loss of life—1,198 souls, including many prominent Americans, among them Mr. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. America, committed to a policy of nonintervention, watched all these grim events on the other side of the Atlantic with increasing nervousness, assured by President Wilson that “There is such a thing as being too proud to fight.” It was in the summer of 1915 that the two little girls—Joan, who was six years old, and Babette, who was five—set up a lemonade stand constructed of two orange crates on the sidewalk outside the house on Grand Boulevard. Essie made them their lemonade, suggested a price of two cents a glass and, at the end of the afternoon, the girls dutifully turned over their receipts—forty-two cents—to their mother.

It was in 1915, too, as Essie remembers it, that she began to notice the change that was taking place in her husband. She knew that his business was taking up much of his time, and she didn't resent that. Even at home, he spent much of his time on the telephone, often talking late into the night long after she and the children had gone to bed. She knew that the business was expanding rapidly, and that this expansion demanded his full attention. She also knew that certain differences had arisen between Jake and George Eaton, and that these differences weighed heavily on his mind. It had been Charles Wilmont's suggestion, for example, that an independent chemist be given the assignment of checking on the efficacy of some of Eaton & Cromwell's remedies, and now there was even talk of Eaton & Cromwell building a laboratory of its own. As Charles had expected, many of Mr. Eaton's cures had been tested and found quite worthless.

“The trouble is,” said Jake, “that Eaton not only invented these things, but he
named
them. He feels about them as though they were his own children. When we try to explain to him that his French Arsenic Complexion Wafers won't do a thing to cure acne, that his Vegetable Cure for Female Weakness is nothing but watered-down tomato juice, that his Great Hay Fever Remedy could actually cause kidney disease, and that his Ten-Day Miracle Cure for gout has killed rats in the lab, he can't bear the idea of having to drop these things from the line. He argues, argues all the time. He says things like, ‘Well, if this Ten-Day Miracle Cure won't work, let the lab come up with a Ten-Day Miracle Cure that will.' We have to keep repeating to him, ‘George, there
is
no ten-day miracle cure, dammit!' He argues back, ‘But you've got to admit it's one hell of a good name!' It's an uphill battle with him, every day, trying to turn this into a company our customers will trust.”

All these exigencies of the new business were, Essie knew, very trying to Jake. And all this was understandable. But it was a subtle difference in tone that she had begun to notice—the tone of voice in which he spoke to her, the tone in which he dealt with his family—a certain abruptness, peremptoriness.

“Your little daughters have retailing talents, too, it seems,” she said to him. “Look—forty-two cents which Joan and Babette made from their lemonade stand this afternoon.”

“I don't want them doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Running a lemonade stand.”

“Why not?”

“It's not dignified,” he said. “And it's also dangerous. I'm getting to be well known in this town. Haven't you heard of kidnappers?”

“Kidnappers? In this nice neighborhood?”

“And that's another thing,” he said, changing the subject. “It's high time we started looking for a house in a better part of town.”

And another time, he had come home from the office and presented her with a small box. She opened it, and in it were a pair of diamond earrings. “Oh, Jake,” she said. “How beautiful!”

She had been about to throw her arms around him and kiss him when he said, “And incidentally, run down to Field's tomorrow and get yourself some decent outfits.”

Trying not to show her hurt, she said, “I don't need any new outfits, Jake.”

“The woman to ask for there is Miss Marguerite. In the French Room. Just tell her who you are.”

It had been in 1915, too, that he had bought his first automobile, a long black Pierce-Arrow, and, because he could not afford the time to learn to drive, he had engaged a young chauffeur named McKay to drive him. And it was true, now, that his name was often in the newspapers. In fact, she found herself increasingly relying on the newspapers to inform her of Eaton & Cromwell's fiscal progress. On October 17, 1915, for example, the following story appeared in the Chicago
Tribune:

EATON & CROMWELL NOW NATION'S

LARGEST PARCEL POST CUSTOMER

Within two years of the inauguration of Parcel Post service, the Chicago-based mail-order house of Eaton & Cromwell, Inc. has become its single biggest user, U.S. Post Office Department sources revealed today. Eaton & Cromwell floods the Chicago Post Office with an average of 20,000 pieces a day, and these figures are expected to climb as the annual Christmas shopping season approaches.

Ordinary retailers, meanwhile, complain that the Post Office is, in effect, subsidizing the growing mail-order houses, since their catalogues have been given the category of second-class “educational matter,” the same as books and periodicals, and can therefore be mailed out to customers at considerably lower costs. George Smiley, for example, a local retailer, says, “What they're sending out is nothing but advertising. And yet they're given the same break as the publishers of fine literary magazines such as
Harper's
. You tell me if that's fair.”

Mr. Jacob Auerbach, however, who with advertising head George Eaton pilots Eaton & Cromwell, counters this by saying, “Our postal bill runs as high as $6,000 a day, and this money is going directly into the coffers of the United States Government. If anyone thinks we're getting a bargain from the Post Office, all he needs to do is multiply this figure by roughly three hundred mailing days, and see what our outlay is.”

Eaton & Cromwell, founded in 1903 by Mr. Eaton and Cyrus Cromwell, started out solely as a purveyor of patent medicines. Since Mr. Auerbach joined the firm two years ago, the company has been steadily expanding into other kinds of merchandise, including men's and women's apparel, housewares, furniture, small appliances, and gift items. Next year, the company plans to introduce its own line of automobile accessories.…

“Why isn't Abe's name ever mentioned in these stories?” Essie asked him.

“Abe prefers the silent partner role,” he said. “Something to do with the trouble he got himself into in New York, I imagine. He and I don't talk too much about that.”

At the next board meeting, Charles Wilmont brought up a matter of business. “Rothman Brothers is for sale,” he said. Rothman Brothers was one of their chief suppliers of apparel. “And I propose we buy it.”

“You mean get into manufacturing?” Jake asked.

“Exactly. If we became our own manufacturers in this area, the savings would be tremendous, and if we can modernize Rothman's operations the way we have our shipping, the savings would be even more. This seems to me the next logical step, and I think we should make this sort of thing one of our long-range goals. As manufacturers become available, we should snap them up. If we could become our own jobbers and wholesalers, nobody in the country could undersell us.”

“I like that as an ad slogan,” said George Eaton. “‘Nobody Undersells Us!'”

“As a matter of fact, so do I,” Charles said.

“I can see it on the cover of our next catalogue,” Jake said. “‘Nobody Undersells Us.'”

Thus it was that a new slogan was born, and that the cloak-and-suit-making firm of Rothman Brothers was absorbed by Eaton & Cromwell, the first of many such acquisitions.

Some of the newspaper stories of the era were not entirely complimentary:

EATON & CROMWELL WORKERS AMONG

LOWEST PAID IN CITY; MUST TURN TO VICE

TO MAKE ENDS MEET, COMMISSION SAYS

In a report issued today, the Chicago Vice Commission, as part of its continuing effort to rid the Windy City of its reputation as a hotbed of vice and crime, revealed that more than $15 million a year is derived from vice in Chicago, and that at least 5,000 women practice prostitution full or part time. How, the report asked, is it possible for a single woman who does not live at home to eke out a living on what the Commission found to be the average woman's salary of $6 a week?

“It is impossible to figure it out on a mathematical basis,” the report stated. “If the wage were eight dollars per week, and the girl paid two and a half dollars for her room, one dollar for laundry, and sixty cents for carfare, she would have less than fifty cents left at the end of the week. This is provided she ate ten-cent breakfasts, fifteen-cent lunches, and twenty-five cent dinners.” Her only solution, the report implied, was to turn to prostitution in her after-work hours.

Cited as an example was Eaton & Cromwell, the emerging mail-order giant, which in recent years has become one of the largest employers in the city. Eaton & Cromwell currently employs more than 2,200 people, most of these young women in its assembly-line operations, for an average weekly wage of $9.12, with the lowest wages, $5 weekly, paid to girls under sixteen and raised to $5.50 if they have lasted three months.…

Mr. Jacob Auerbach, Eaton & Cromwell's chief executive officer, could not be reached for comment. The Governor's office in Springfield, meanwhile, has promised a full investigation of the Commission's findings.

Reading stories like these gave Essie a very uneasy feeling, remembering, as she did, how she had marched in the Children's Strike at Cohen's paper-box factory in 1904.

“I'm certain none of our young ladies are walking the streets at night, Jake,” Charles Wilmont said, putting down the paper. “That's just yellow journalism—sensationalism to sell papers. On the other hand, we can't have stories like this appearing. We've got to do something.”

“Issue a blanket denial?”

“I've got a better idea,” Charles said.

“What is it?”

“It's called profit sharing,” he said. Carefully, he outlined his proposal to him.

“… And you'd be the first employer to do it,” Charles said when he had finished. “And one of the first in the country. Instead of appearing to be a Scrooge or a Simon Legree, or—pardon an allusion to your religion, Jake—a Shylock, you'd emerge as—”

“As what?”

Charles smiled. “The word I'm thinking of is ‘humanitarian,'” he said.

CHICAGOAN ANNOUNCES REVOLUTIONARY

NEW PLAN TO SHARE PROFITS WITH

EMPLOYEES

In a press conference called today at the Chicago headquarters of Eaton & Cromwell & Co., Mr. Jacob Auerbach, executive head of the mail-order giant, announced a bold and revolutionary plan whereby the company's employees will share directly in its profits.

Mr. Auerbach explained that he was acting swiftly to dispel published reports that his employees, most of whom are young females, were being ill-used or ill-paid, and were forced to turn to vice in their after-hours in order to support themselves. Mr. Auerbach added that since the majority of his energies have been expended overseeing the company's rapid expansion, he himself had left the matter of payroll in the hands of his Personnel Department, and was “just as shocked as anyone else” when he read in the
Tribune
of how little his employees were being paid.

Under the new plan, five percent of the company's net earnings will be turned over to a special fund, to be shared by employees. This deduction, furthermore, will be made before stockholders' dividends are paid. The company currently employs more than two thousand workers, and already more than ninety percent of these have voted to join the plan. In less than three years, under Auerbach's stewardship, Eaton & Cromwell has expanded from annual sales of $250,000 to a figure estimated to be over $20,000,000. Since the company is privately owned by members of the Eaton, Cromwell and Auerbach families, no firm profit figures are available, but are assumed to be considerable.

“This seems to me both a humanitarian and practical move,” Auerbach said. “In letting employees share the profits, we are giving each individual a personal stake in how well we all do our jobs. Each will have a stake in our growing reputation for delivering fine merchandise at an honest price. It will be interesting to see how many other employers follow our lead,” he added.

“Now that you're getting to be so important,” Essie said, “why don't you change the name to Auerbach and Company?”

She had been only half-serious, but he had taken it very seriously. “Don't be absurd,” he snapped. “The company's Christian names are two of our biggest assets. We don't want to be known as a Jewish firm. Most of our customers are Christian, and wouldn't like dealing with Jews. And I might add that it's not a particularly good time to have a German name, what with what's going on over there. A lot of people are changing their names, you know.”