To the Old Adam

In the once-great trading post of Vincennes, Ind., there is no longer a Gimbel Brothers-owned store; but four Gimbels went there last week to honor their tribe and business, founded there just 100 years ago. At table's head sat Grandson Bernard, president of Gimbel Brothers, Inc. and present family hetman. Knowing his genealogy as well as his retailing (to a Gimbel, the two are one), Bernard proudly enumerated the far-flung Gimbel line.

When 20-year-old Adam, immigrant Bavarian peddler, opened his "Palace of Trade" in Vincennes in 1842, his policies looked mighty suspicious to the 1,700 townspeople: no haggling, one price to all. But it worked. His seven sons, banding together as the Gimbel Brothers, mushroomed the business into a chain of nine great stores, whose sales in 1941 were probably about $115,000,000, profits (before taxes) $6,000,000.

Isaac, Adam's second son, was the spark plug. He started the tradition that every Gimbel should start at the bottom of the retail ladder, work up. Practically every male Gimbel since has done so, though not all stuck it out.

Bernard is Isaac's oldest son. Big, barrel-chested, clean-living, popular, he was an amateur boxer in his youth, owns Bellows' Stag at Sharkey's, and is called "Uncle Bernie" by the children of his friend Gene Tunney. He achieved his Gimbel hegemony partly through the backing of Julius Rosenwald, then financially interested. Close friend of Horace Saks, Bernard promoted the Saks-Gimbel merger in 1923. Bernard and Horace worked out the deal while riding on a coffin in a baggage car, the smoking car being too crowded.

Though head of the clan, Bernard is not its patriarch. That is Ellis, 76, board chairman and only survivor of the original Gimbel Brothers. Bernard's brother Frederic, a vice president, has made newspaper trouble for the family in a small way; breach-of-promise suits have taken him twice to court, though never to the altar. But the only real rift in the clan was between Bernard and his cousin, old Ellis' brilliant son Richard.

A Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, where he made money by advertising "Tutoring Classes de Luxe," Richard became head of the Philadelphia store at the age of 30, boasts that he pulled it out of a $1,700,000 deficit in three years. But he also started quarreling with Bernard. When he fired his merchandise manager, a Bernard appointee, there was a great public row, and the board fired Richard. He then went into business in Florida, and is now a U.S. Army captain (aged 43) in Washington.

Another escaped Gimbel is Richard's brother Ellis Jr. Two years after leaving Yale (class of '19) he launched Philadelphia's first radio station (Gimbel-owned WIP), soon ran the Philadelphia store, in 1929 became executive vice president of the corporation. But in 1940 Ellis Jr. resigned to go into the brokerage business (now Gimbel & Co.).

Other nonretailing Gimbels: Bernard's nephews Lee Adam, who became a broker and met death in an unexplained fall from the ninth floor of the Yale Club; Louis, who resigned to enter Wall Street, is now with hops brokers S. S. Steiner & Co.; and Benedict, present boss of WIP, who married and divorced a Wampus baby star.

Still at work, however, is Cousin Adam Long, only son of old Adam's third son Charles. Adam tried to duck the business by studying architecture, but 1925 found him president of Saks-Fifth Avenue. He proved just the man for the job, soon made catering to the classes as profitable as other Gimbels had made catering to the masses. Fifteen months ago Adam opened a Saks branch in Detroit, has watched it thrive too. Another active Gimbel was Bernard's son Bruce until he recently started piloting bombers.

Bernard and his relatives could be proud last week. Gimbel's sales were the best since 1930, profits 15% ahead of 1940. Said they, toasting old Adam: "The best hundred years lie ahead."

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