Callisthenics

A pert, imaginative magnifico who was born in Ripon, Wis. and cleaned up a cool million in Chicago's Marshall Field & Co., was Harry Gordon Self ridge, 51, when in 1909 he started Self ridge & Co. in London. By impudent American-style promotion it soon became most talked about, one of the most successful of London's department stores, now has annual sales of some $75,000,000. Among the earliest of Harry Selfridge's stunts was an advertisement in the form of an institutional editorial, run daily in the London Times over the by-line "Callisthenes" (the personal biographer of Alexander the Great). The "Callisthenes" articles caught British fancy at once, have long been profitable for the store. Two months ago Selfridge's "Callisthenes" hopped the sea, made its debut as an advertisement in New York's Herald Tribune. U. S. storekeepers wondered why. Last week they had a chance to find out when dapper little Mr. Selfridge himself popped up in Manhattan.

The first U. S. outpouring by "Callisthenes" explained itself as intended: "to be a contribution, in a way, to the philosophy of business, to try to excite in the public mind a fuller appreciation, a wider recognition of the fine principles, the high sportsmanlike standards of business as now carried on in England, Europe as a whole, and in America. For we are sportsmen, we men of business. . . ." Subsequent columns dealt with such topics as "Sliding on the Surface or Digging Deep?'', "What Lands Us in the Rough of the Game of Life," "Thinking Constructively.'' Readers who plowed through these lush homilies generally concluded that Harry Selfridge was about to extend his operations to Manhattan. Last week Harry Selfridge, still pert and lively at 79, declared, "There is nothing further from my mind than to buy a business or associate myself with any business in this country. 'Callisthenes' in Manhattan," said Mr. Selfridge, "is purely an extravagant idiosyncrasy. ... I like to do the impudent thing and I consider it extremely impudent in a friendly, comradelike way to print business philosophy and observations to be read at least to a degree by the merchants of this country. ..."

Still fond of impudence, he also announced but not in the column of "Callisthenes": "I think Hitler is absolutely a great patriot. Mussolini also is a patriot, and a fine patriot, but sometimes he seems a little aggressive in his patriotism."

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