Window Mile

In London last week, H. Gordon Self ridge, Anglicized-American whose daughters have married Frenchmen, owner of the great British department stores (Selfridge & Co., Ltd. and its branches in the provinces) was busily negotiating for control of a rival department store--Whiteley's.

William Whiteley, son of a country grain dealer, came to London and opened a draper's shop while the U.S. Civil War raged. He put his trust in window displays, at a time when storekeepers had to decoy customers into their murky shops. Victorians were dazzled, and he became the "Universal Provider." When shot to death* in 1907, he had a business worth $4,500,000. This, since the War, has supported the model garden village of Burhill, near Walton on the Thames, where several hundred aged men and women workers, indigents, prolong a lean existence in 300 cottages.

By acquiring Whiteley's, H. Gordon Selfridge, onetime partner of Marshall Field's, Chicago, becomes the greatest store owner of Europe. In London alone he will have a full mile of window displays.

*By one Horace George Rayner who thought himself Merchant Whiteley's illegitimate son.