Marshall Field

American merchant

• Born: August 18, 1834
• Birthplace: Near Conway, Massachusetts
• Died: January 16, 1906
• Place of death: New York, New York

The founder of Marshall Field and Company, which became the largest wholesale and retail dry-goods store in the world, Field introduced many retailing concepts that set standards for modern merchandising that have endured into the twenty-first century.

Early Life

Marshall Field was the son of John and Fidelia (née Nash) Field. His family had lived in Massachusetts since 1629, when his ancestor Zechariah Field had come over from England. Although his father was a farmer, the agrarian life did not appeal to young Marshall. Instead, he left home at the age of seventeen and took a job in a dry-goods store owned by Deacon Davis in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He worked there for five years, but even though Davis offered him a partnership in the business, Field had other plans. He saw the West as the site of his future, as the place where huge fortunes could be made by those ambitious and talented enough to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities caused by its rapid development and population growth. Accordingly, he left New England in 1856 and moved to the rude and dirty, but potentially thriving, city of Chicago, Illinois.

Field arrived in Chicago with little money and secured a job as a clerk with Cooley, Wadsworth and Company, the largest wholesale dry-goods firm in the city at the time. His starting salary was four hundred dollars a year and, as an indication of his future business sense, he managed to save half of this amount by living and sleeping in the store. A small, handsome young man with a serious and polite demeanor and a large handlebar mustache, Field also displayed a true flair for the dry-goods business and a unique appeal to and concern for the customer. As a result, he rapidly advanced through the hierarchy of the firm.

Within a year of Field’s arrival in Chicago, he was made a traveling salesperson for the company, and in 1861 he became general manager of the Chicago store. His rapid rise culminated in 1862, when he was invited to be a full partner in the company, which changed its name to Cooley, Farwell and Company. In 1864, when the financial wizard Levi Z. Leiter joined as a new partner, Field finally had his name added to the company’s title, Farwell, Field and Company. Impressed by the entrepreneurial and financial skill of Field and Leiter, the millionaire Potter S. Palmer offered to sell them his retail and wholesale dry-goods business in 1865. The two men jumped at the chance and, with money borrowed from Palmer himself, they formed the new firm of Field, Palmer, and Leiter. Palmer dropped completely out of the business two years later in order to concentrate exclusively on his hotel interests, leaving Field and Leiter in sole control of the growing firm. In only eight years, and by the age of thirty, Marshall Field had risen from a lowly clerk to the co-owner of one of the largest dry-goods operations in Chicago.

Life’s Work

After Palmer retired from the firm in 1867, Field invited his two younger brothers, Henry and Joseph Field, to join as partners, thus consolidating his control of the business at Leiter’s expense. Nevertheless, Leiter remained a partner until he sold his interest to Field in 1881. Wholesale and retail sales, which had stood at approximately ten million dollars annually at the time of Palmer’s withdrawal, climbed to nearly thirty-five million dollars by the early 1890’s and had surpassed sixty-eight million dollars by the time of Field’s death in 1906. Not even such catastrophes as the Chicago fire of 1871 (which completely destroyed his retail store and wholesale warehouse), the financial panic of 1873 (which ruined many Chicago merchants), or another fire in 1877 in his main retail outlet at the corner of State and Washington streets significantly slowed this pattern of expansion. As an example of this powerful drive to succeed, Field led Chicago in its recovery from the 1871 fire by establishing a temporary store in a horse barn at State and Twentieth streets only two weeks after the flames had died out.

At first, the wholesale aspect of the business interested Field more than the retail side. As time went on, however, and Field realized the immense profit potential of quality retailing, he devoted more and more of his energy to it, to the exclusion of the wholesale part of the firm. In 1873, the retail branch was physically separated from the wholesale branch with the opening of a new store at State and Washington streets. A program of continual expansion followed, culminating in the creation of the magnificent, city block-square entrepôt in 1912, six years after Field’s death. This massive structure still stands and serves as the flagship store of the Field Company as well as a familiar landmark in the heart of downtown Chicago.

Field was not a merchandising innovator but was adept at adopting new methods in retailing pioneered by others. His store plainly marked prices on all goods, so that customers knew exactly what the costs of items were when they examined them. He established resident buyers in England, France, and Germany in order to ensure his store a steady supply of quality foreign-made goods and frequently made it a practice to become the exclusive agent of popular products in Chicago—thus making sure that if customers wanted a certain product, they had to come to Fields to buy it.

Field’s reputation for honesty and courtesy was legendary, and he is credited with coining the motto The Customer Is Always Right. He also was among the first to adopt what is now the accepted practice in retailing marketing: purchasing products at wholesale for cash before there was any real customer demand for them and then, through advertising and attractive window displays, creating that demand. This practice allowed Field to undersell his numerous competitors, who waited for demand to materialize before placing an order with a manufacturer, thus paying a higher wholesale price for the time. Marshall Field and Company was also the first retail outlet in the Midwest to employ window displays, to offer such personal services as gift wrapping to customers, to establish a “bargain basement,” and to open a restaurant within the store.

Field recognized ability when he saw it and often promoted talented managers to partners in his firm as a reward for their dedicated service. Former employees such as Harlow N. Higinbotham, Harry Gordon Selfridge, and John Shedd all became millionaires as a result of this practice. Once they had earned their fortunes as Field’s partners, however, he then frequently proceeded to buy out their interest in the company in order to provide room for younger up-and-comers. The achievement of the American Dream was a real possibility for those who worked for Marshall Field, as long as they demonstrated the ambition, imagination, and ability he admired.

The American Dream was certainly good to Marshall Field as well. By the time of his death, he had amassed a fortune of $120 million. He did not waste this wealth on ostentatious display, as did so many other self-made millionaires of his era. Although he did build himself a grand mansion on Chicago’s prestigious Prairie Avenue (constructed in 1873, at a cost of $100,000, by Richard Morris Hunt, the famous architect who had designed the fabulous palaces of William Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor in New York), he otherwise lived a rather simple life dominated by his devotion to his work. He preferred to walk to his office and frequently ridiculed the pretensions of the wealthy. For example, when he was informed that a clerk was dating his daughter, he responded, “Thank God, there is no disgrace in being a clerk.”

Field was not a prolific philanthropist, but when he did give, he made his gifts count. After he first arrived in Chicago, he became active in such diverse organizations as the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Chicago Historical Association, the Art Institute, and the Civic Federation. However, as the years went by, business concerns monopolized an increasing portion of his time, and he let his membership in most of these organizations lapse. The year 1889 saw the rejuvenation of his charitable generosity. In that year he donated a ten-acre parcel of land, valued at $125,000, to serve as the site of the new University of Chicago. He later supplemented that gift with a $100,000 endowment to the school.

In 1891, Field gave $50,000 worth of land to the Chicago Home for Incurables, and, in 1893, he gave $1 million to create the Columbian Museum at the Chicago World’s Fair. A provision in his will for a further $8 million allowed this museum to construct a permanent building on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and to enlarge its collection. In appreciation of his support, the institution took the name the Field Museum of Natural History ; it remains one of the best museums of its type in the United States.

Field’s personal life contained a large share of tragedy. His first wife, Nannie Scott (they were married in January, 1863), left him during the late 1880’s and took up permanent residence in France. After she died in 1896, he secretly courted Mrs. Delia Spencer Caton and married her shortly after her husband’s death in 1905. Then, in November, 1905, his only son, Marshall Field, Jr., accidentally shot and killed himself while preparing for a hunting trip. This last blow proved to be too much for the elderly multimillionaire. He came down with pneumonia in late December, 1905, and died on January 16, 1906. The bulk of his huge estate was left in trust to his two grandsons, Henry Field and Marshall Field III. The latter would become the founder and first publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Significance

Marshall Field embodied those characteristics of ambition, business sense, hard work, and simplicity that Americans of his era valued so highly. The fact that a New England dry-goods clerk could become one of the wealthiest men in the United States suggested that success was within the grasp of anyone willing to work hard enough. Although there were thousands of failed clerks for every Marshall Field, Field nevertheless served as a shining example for every ambitious young man who entered the business world.

Field’s impact on the American retail trade was equally striking. Although not an innovator himself, Field was willing to gamble on the innovations of others. He thus introduced many ideas first pioneered on the East Coast to Chicago and made his store the most progressive in the city throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His emphasis on fairness and “the customer is always right” also won for him millions of loyal customers. As a result, in Chicago the name Marshall Field is still associated with honesty, courtesy, and high-quality merchandise at a fair price.

Finally, Field also had a profound influence on the history and institutions of the city of Chicago. Without his generosity, it is doubtful that the University of Chicago and the Field Museum of Natural History would exist. The prosperous State Street business district grew up around his State and Washington store and thus owes its life to Field’s initial decision to locate there in 1873. His descendants, notably Marshall Field III, would play prominent roles in local politics and the press. Finally, several generations of Chicagoans have grown up with fond memories of Christmas trips to Field’s to talk to Santa Claus, to gaze at the gigantic Christmas tree towering from the center of the Walnut Room, and to be dazzled by those magical Christmas window displays. Christmas and Field’s go hand in hand in the hearts of Chicagoans and in the memories of ex-Chicagoans. Perhaps it is this feeling that represents Marshall Field’s most profound gift to his beloved adopted city.

Bibliography

Cromie, Robert. The Great Chicago Fire. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1958. A detailed account of the holocaust that destroyed a good portion of the city in 1871. Also provides an informative description of Field’s efforts to get both his business and the city back on their feet after the fire.

Drury, John. Old Chicago Houses. Skokie, Ill.: Rand McNally, 1941. Includes drawings, photographs, and an accurate description of Field’s mansion on Prairie Avenue.

Madsen, Axel. The Marshall Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002. A history of six generations of the Fields family, beginning with Marshall Field. Madsen provides an account of Marshall Field’s career, detailing his business methods and creation of his department store empire. The author also describes Field’s failed personal life and focuses on the controversial and most important members of the succeeding five generations of this family.

Pierce, Bessie Louise. The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893. Vol. 3 in A History of Chicago. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. An excruciatingly minute history of the city during the late nineteenth century that includes numerous, and often colorful, anecdotes on the life, business, and contributions of Field.

Pridmore, Jay. Marshall Field’s: A Building from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2002. At the time of its construction, Field’s flagship building was the largest department store in the world. Today, the building is a Chicago architectural landmark. This book’s text and photographs provide architectural details of the building and its annexes, and describe earlier buildings in which the store was housed.

Twyman, Robert W. Marshall Field and Company, 1852-1906. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1906. Based on the author’s doctoral dissertation, the book provides an excellent, although occasionally dry, analysis of the rise of Field’s retailing empire.

Wagenknecht, Edward C. Chicago. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964. A brief, rather impressionistic, portrait of the history of the city that also presents a spotty but productive investigation of Field’s influence during the late nineteenth century.

Wendt, Lloyd, and Herman Kogan. Chicago: A Pictorial History. New York: Bonanza Books, 1958. Although brief on text, this visual history contains photographs of Field, his stores, and his mansion.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Give the Lady What She Wants. Skokie, Ill.: Rand McNally, 1952. An exciting and well-written history of Marshall Field and Company until 1950.