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Page 33
He had a right to be proud of Childs' Cash Store. Twelve years before he
had landed in Oakland with fourteen dollars and forty-three cents. Cents
did not circulate so far West, and after the fourteen dollars were gone,
he continued to carry the three pennies in his pocket for a weary while.
Later, when he had got a job clerking in a small grocery for eleven
dollars a week, and had begun sending a small monthly postal order to
one, Agatha Childs, East Falls, Connecticut, he invested the three
coppers in postage stamps. Uncle Sam could not reject his own lawful
coin of the realm.
Having spent all his life in cramped New England, where sharpness and
shrewdness had been whetted to razor-edge on the harsh stone of meagre
circumstance, he had found himself abruptly in the loose and
free-and-easy West, where men thought in thousand-dollar bills and
newsboys dropped dead at sight of copper cents. Josiah Childs bit like
fresh acid into the new industrial and business conditions. He had
vision. He saw so many ways of making money all at once, that at first
his brain was in a whirl.
At the same time, being sane and conservative, he had resolutely avoided
speculation. The solid and substantial called to him. Clerking at eleven
dollars a week, he took note of the lost opportunities, of the openings
for safe enterprise, of the countless leaks in the business. If, despite
all this, the boss could make a good living, what couldn't he, Josiah
Childs, do with his Connecticut training? It was like a bottle of wine
to a thirsty hermit, this coming to the active, generous-spending West
after thirty-five years in East Falls, the last fifteen of which had
been spent in humdrum clerking in the humdrum East Falls general store.
Josiah Childs' head buzzed with the easy possibilities he saw. But he
did not lose his head. No detail was overlooked. He spent his spare
hours in studying Oakland, its people, how they made their money, and
why they spent it and where. He walked the central streets, watching the
drift of the buying crowds, even counting them and compiling the
statistics in various notebooks. He studied the general credit system of
the trade, and the particular credit systems of the different districts.
He could tell to a dot the average wage or salary earned by the
householders of any locality, and he made it a point of thoroughness to
know every locality from the waterfront slums to the aristocratic Lake
Merritt and Piedmont sections, from West Oakland, where dwelt the
railroad employ�s, to the semi-farmers of Fruitvale at the opposite end
of the city.
Broadway, on the main street and in the very heart of the shopping
district, where no grocer had ever been insane enough to dream of
establishing a business, was his ultimate selection. But that required
money, while he had to start from the smallest of beginnings. His first
store was on lower Filbert, where lived the nail-workers. In half a
year, three other little corner groceries went out of business while he
was compelled to enlarge his premises. He understood the principle of
large sales at small profits, of stable qualities of goods, and of a
square deal. He had glimpsed, also, the secret of advertising. Each week
he set forth one article that sold at a loss to him. This was not an
advertised loss, but an absolute loss. His one clerk prophesied
impending bankruptcy when butter, that cost Childs thirty cents, was
sold for twenty-five cents, when twenty-two-cent coffee was passed
across the counter at eighteen cents. The neighbourhood housewives came
for these bargains and remained to buy other articles that sold at a
profit. Moreover, the whole neighbourhood came quickly to know Josiah
Childs, and the busy crowd of buyers in his store was an attraction in
itself.
But Josiah Childs made no mistake. He knew the ultimate foundation on
which his prosperity rested. He studied the nail works until he came to
know as much about them as the managing directors. Before the first
whisper had stirred abroad, he sold his store, and with a modest sum of
ready cash went in search of a new location. Six months later the nail
works closed down, and closed down forever.
His next store was established on Adeline Street, where lived a
comfortable, salaried class. Here, his shelves carried a higher-grade
and a more diversified stock. By the same old method, he drew his crowd.
He established a delicatessen counter. He dealt directly with the
farmers, so that his butter and eggs were not only always dependable but
were a shade better than those sold by the finest groceries in the city.
One of his specialties was Boston baked beans, and so popular did it
become that the Twin Cabin Bakery paid him better than handsomely for
the privilege of taking it over. He made time to study the farmers, the
very apples they grew, and certain farmers he taught how properly to
make cider. As a side-line, his New England apple cider proved his
greatest success, and before long, after he had invaded San Francisco,
Berkeley, and Alameda, he ran it as an independent business.
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