ABSTRACT
There was a time once, in the old simple individual days, when dry goods stores could be human. They expressed, in a quiet, easy way, the souls of the people who owned them. When machinery was invented and when organization was invented—machines of people—dry goods stores became vast selling-machines. In a department store the employer expresses himself to his clerks through every one of the other twenty-five hundred; they mingle and stir their souls and hopes and fears together, and he expresses himself to all of them through them all. The modern employer finds himself set sternly face to face, every day of his life, with this question.
