Dupuis Freres Department Store, Montreal 1910 era
The Nicholsons of Flo in the City lived in a town of 2,500 and I’ve written about the prestigious position store-keepers held in the community. These were prominent and influential citizens. In Richmond, Quebec there was JC Sutherland, Bedard, Mr. Wales, etc. But the times they were a changin’ and in the cities, the department stores were being established. London, Paris, New York, Chicago all had had them for a while. Flo visited a department store in Boston in 1908 and rode ‘the moving stair.’ She remarks on it in a letter on http://www.tighsolas.ca/
The BBC recently ran a dramatization an Emile Zola book that takes place in one of Paris’s first department stores. This book is a love story, but it describes how the department store owner tries to take over a city block (by putting the other shopkeepers out of business) but the young greedy guy is stymied by one obsinate old umbrella merchant. In this story, the owner of the store mentions that department stores are a safe place for women to shop. Yes, the cities were considered dangerous, especially for a woman alone. But now women had a respectable place to visit, alone, other than church. And so it happened that the female increasingly became the driving force of 2oth century consumerism. (By 1900, Carrie Derick described the home as no longer a center of production, but a center of consumption.)
Outside Simpson’s, Queen Street. 1910 era. Women shoppers…. Give us a place to stand and a place to go… Here’s an excerpt from the 1910 article.
“Canada has passed the “General Store” stage. There are now but a few memorials of the days when all the cities were towns; and all the towns were crossroads villages. More than thirty Canadian cities have a population of 10,0o0 or over; and of these, two are above 250,000 each. All these cities have stores which are in harmony with the size of the place; the larger cities have departmental stores.
From general stores to departmental stores is a far cry, but Canada has made it in a quarter century. The large wholesale and the large specialty store and the departmental store were as sure to come as the telephone, the electric street light and the electric street car.
The general manager of the departmental store must secure a capable and efficient head for each department, and each of these thirty or forty heads must be taught to work under one system without friction. The GM must secure an army of polite, well-dressed, patient and activc employees and infuse them with fidelity to his interests.
The success of the department store is self-evident. It gives low prices, convenience and ensures honest practice.”
(Then the article describes the mail order business of Simpsons, not Eaton’s.)
