New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-04-13

capital, but Woolworth had scanty sum
of $50. They could succeed. Woolworth
could but try and fail
But so confident was he of the posi-
bllitics of the idea that he denied the
existence of difficulties, succeeded in Dor
rowing $500 on the basis of sheer en-
thusiasm, selected 1922 worth of goods
and started store in Utica, the tee-
gram ordering the goods eating up all
but So of all he had
The store was a success
Yet his greatest problem in those DAYS
was how to draw a check or start an
account or keep the simplest of books.
In business he was distinctly novice.
After while his trade ran down, but
instead of waiting for it to peter out
entirely he moved to Lancaster. Penn.
where his success was so great that
within month he opened up another
store in Harrisburg
The Harrisburg store, however. did
not fare SO we'll, and was closed in March,
1884, new store was opened in York,
Penn, but this too proved a failure and
1T was closed after a three months trial.
1t was ten years after the birth of the
99-cent stores. They had Aourished and
died History, it seemed, was to repeat
Itself 1t had already put its mark of
doom on all the other and 10 cent
stores. OF the hundreds which had
sprung up all over the country the two
Woolworth stores, one in Scranton and
one IN Lancaster, alone struggled on, Just
waiting for the final crash and closing.
The gray clouds did not dishearten
young Woolworth He went on, disre
gardlng the signs and portents of the
times. He did just the reverse, and
opened another store in Reading, Penn
This he followed with another and an
other.
SO, true to his policy, he continued to
go on, opening new stores as fast as his
finances would permit, never borrowing
a penny for promotion, until the name of
Woolworth was known in every town
that scraped 5000 or more people to-
gether. There were thousand of them
IN the country at the time of his death.
Everything he did, it seemed, epito
mzed the romance of American industry.
His struggles were many, his success
hard won, and the bizarre and unusual
found small place in HIS life story.
But his monument stands. 1t rises
high above the rest of the city, towering
hundreds of feet to the sky, a cathedral
of commerce outdoing in height the Pan
theon at Rome, the great Pyramid of
Cheops, st. Peters of Rome and tho
Cologne Cathedral. And, what is more.
it was paid for out of his own accumu-
lations of intintesimal dimes and nickels.
Because he went on
The Aladdin parallel by no means
ends with the rearing of the monu-
mental building on Broadway. The
rubbed nickel brought still more into the
life of the magician who learned it's
fruitful properties. All the rewards of
a life of industrious business genius fell
to the lot of Mr.. Woolworth. No narrow
man devoted to his figures, he loved
music and kept his box at the opera. II
was characteristic Of this man of LARGE
vision that he loved his music in the
large; hence the pipe organ in his coun-
try home. He not merely got much of
material profit from the world he made
the world yield him other profits of the
mlnd more precious still When he died
he was still, and in every sense, going
on
>>tJ. AG