S. S. Childs

As it must to all men, Death came, last week, to Samuel S. Childs, 61, founder and President of the Childs Restaurant Co. Mr. Childs, suffering from a tumor of the small intestine, had been taken from his home in Bernardsville, N. J., to Manhattan where, after an operation, he died.

Samuel S. Childs, with ten other Childs children, was born on a meagre New Jersey farm near Bernardsville, where all his relatives now live in handsome houses on a shiny street called Childs Avenue. He, as a boy, desired to, wear the uniform of his country, and with this end in view entered the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, changed his mind, became a civil engineer, left engineering, entered the service of one Alfred W. Dennett, restaurant proprietor.

This Dennett owned a chain of 17 restaurants which sprawled across the continent from Manhattan to San Francisco. People called him the "temperance proprietor," because the walls of his liquorless and gruesome eating places were adorned with texts from the Bible. The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want confronted those who had money enough to eat in Dennett's. Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out. Proprietor Dennett failed, in 1901, for $92,000. Most of his creditors were women and missionary societies. His asset was one $20 hand-me-down suit. But young Mr. Childs, who had made some money in his employ, had by this time started a restaurant of his own.

It was located in downtown Manhattan--a neat, clean little establishment. Samuel and his brother William (now President of the Childs Co.) believed that they could make money on a small place, flagrantly scrubbed, which sold good food cheaply. They put the name of Childs in white letters on the window. They knew that the sort of U. S. men who would eat there enjoyed having their food set before them by young females with clean fingernails. Therefore they procured waitresses, dressed them in white.

Now there are 107 such establishments; they serve 50,000,000 meals a year, yield an annual profit of $2,000,000.