John Wanamaker

“ Many a young man who has read the story of John Wanamaker's romantic career has gained very little inspiration or help from it toward his own elevation and advancement, for he looks upon it as the result of good luck, chance, or fate. ”

“ In this land which is worse than hell, it actually happens that he is sometimes compelled to take dinner with John Wanamaker, and to lunch with Theodore Roosevelt!
The amazement within me grows as I dwell upon the black man’s woes, and I marvel that Doctor Washington, Judson Lyons, Bishop Turner “and others among ’em” do not pack right up and go straight back to dear old Africa.
And to think that the man who declared this country to be worse than hell is a “negro preacher.” I had supposed that if there was any human being who found the United States an ideal abode, it was the “negro preacher.” ”

“ Williamson's heart, and what he fully meant to do;—that being the simple fact, the desire to know how completely his wishes are to be carried out is entirely natural. A short time probably will settle all uncertainty, but in the meanwhile Philadelphians can unite in a feeling commemoration of one of their most generous citizens. Nor will the reputation of his great undertaking be only local. As the name of Girard is national, so will the name of Isaiah V. Williamson be familiar all over the land as one who loved his fellowmen, and who held exceptional wealth only in trust for the general good. ”

“ The Little Man of Large Soul On the 7th of March, 1889, Isaiah V. Williamson journeyed on, and after many days, the city in which he lived woke to some realization of its loss. For eighty-six years he had lived most of his days in Philadelphia, and yet few knew or cared to know him until the last five years of his life. Big men were too busy with their own affairs and little men too narrow to do more than point to him as a shabby, stingy, old man, as if the bent figure and clothes were all of the man or as though the quoting of some one word or act of his indicated the whole of the man. ”

“ In this group of Philadelphia capitalist were men who were reckoned as very astute business lights—George M. Pullman, Thomas Dolan, one of the street railway syndicate whose briberies of legislatures and common councils, and whose manipulation of street railways in Philadelphia and other cities were so notorious a scandal; John Wanamaker, combining piety and sharp business;—these were three of them. But they were no match for the much more powerful and wily Vanderbilt-Morgan forces. They were compelled under resistless pressure to throw over their Reading stock at a great loss to themselves. ”

“ He was invariably strongly moved to help the man who was trying to help himself, however humble the effort. But for mere beggars, low or high, he had little sympathy.
Among the many benevolences of the last decade or so of Williamson's life a few stand out with special boldness on account of the large sums given while he was living. Among these the University of Pennsylvania at one time received a gift of fourteen acres of city property valued at $200,000; the Episcopal Hospital ten acres valued at $75,000 ”

“ Williamson never gave anything spontaneously and generously, of his own initiative, it would at least be to his credit that there was something in his heart which could respond to definite appeals, or that he could succeed in overcoming a natural ungenerosity. But the reverse is true. In numerous instances, his gifts were not only voluntary, but absolutely secret—as, for example, in the many gifts which he made to various charities under the pseudonym of "Hez," which no one knew stood for him till after his death. ”

“ Having always lived in and near Fallsington, knowing everybody and by everybody known, it was not without a struggle that the young fellow turned away to seek his fortune in Philadelphia, which even then was a large city. His few trips for duplicating purchases of Gillingham, who did his own buying, had not left much opportunity for his clerk to become known. Williamson entered the city without a friend save his cousin, Peter Williamson, living on Pine Street, between Eighth and Ninth, opposite the Pennsylvania Hospital. ”

“ Nature has given to almost every man a dowry of latent energy that flames up to the surprise of the man himself when he needs it most.
Young Williamson came to Philadelphia, saying to himself, "I must and will conquer circumstances." All his strength rose and asserted itself when his will power became enlisted in his work.
In 1837 the firm of Williamson & Burroughs was dissolved. Isaiah retired, and his youngest brother, Mahlon, became the active Williamson of the firm. ”

“ Feeling the importance of a largely increased permanent endowment, he worked actively to get others aroused on the subject; and not meeting with the response he desired, he simply did it himself—a little later conveying to the association property on Chestnut Street above Seventh, worth $85,000 or more, and making his total subscription to the fund $100,000 at the lowest valuation. Among the managers and ardent friends of the fund in those days was Edmund A. Souder, one of Williamson's young business contemporaries when he first came to Philadelphia. ”

“ Professor Zueblin once said of William Morris: "There is not a well-furnished house in Christendom but that shows the influence of his good taste and his gracious ideas of economy, harmony and honesty in home decoration." Likewise, we can truthfully say that there is not a successful retail store in America that does not show the influence of A. T. Stewart and his legitimate successor, John Wanamaker.
H. H. ROGERS [Pg 357]
Success is rooted in reciprocity. He who does not benefit the world is headed for bankruptcy on the high-speed clutch. ”

“ But it has a greatness all its own that will abide and enlarge as time goes on, because of a lad born in old Bensalem more than a hundred years ago. Men are living who knew him when he was little and who proudly saw him grow to an honored manhood. They had been unwilling to leave to old scrapbooks of desultory and disconnected newspaper clippings the telling of the story of his life. Therefore, it has been possible to go among them and to jot down what they have said of Isaiah Williamson. ”

“ But now this Home feeling is returning stronger and stronger every year, and for the present and sometime past nothing gives me more real pleasure than to visit Home, which I now call "Clover Hill."
I have received several letters from you since I last wrote, and I assure you they have given me a great deal of pleasure; the first letter opened when I receive my mail is the one with the "Oxford Valley P.O." stamp, should there fortunately be one such.
Write whenever you have time, and do not wait for me, as my time is so fully occupied that I have very little time for anything but business. ”

“ Meeting Massey a little later, their conversation is said to have been something like this:
"They tell me," remarked Williamson, "that you have given a hundred thousand to move the House of Refuge boys out into the country. That is good. There is something in nature to heal the diseased mind as well as the diseased body." ”

“ Isaiah Williamson never for a day of all his long life lost the sweetness, gentleness, and dignity of his little country Quaker mother, nor did he forget the stalwart, rugged manliness, strict honesty, and fairness of his father. ”

“ Wanamaker made an address in which he said, in urging upon the students to be worthy of their election, that Isaiah Williamson, if he knew, would never be satisfied to have a thousand dollars of his money spent upon a ten-cent boy, which seems to have been wrought into the fundamental work of the School. ”

“ Gillingham and his customers to be important and useful, young Williamson never assumed any sense of it and was the same unconceited chap that he was the first day he came into the store.
He spent his Sundays with his parents, and with them and his brothers and sisters attended the Friends' Meeting. The years sped on happily and prosperously, as the young fellow grew in wisdom and ability for business life. ”

“ Mary died of consumption while yet a young woman. Isaiah's life was powerfully affected by the loss of his companion. He became restless, troubled, and anxious for a change of scene. This sorrow was always regarded at Fallsington as the chief reason of his going to Philadelphia when he had completed his apprenticeship. ”

“ It is wonderful how the memory of personality, of courtesy, of willingness to oblige, remains through the years, and comes down from one generation to another. Isaiah Williamson was working in the Gillingham Store eighty years ago, and yet Mrs. Rose Parsons Case, of Morrisville, remembers her mother speaking of Isaiah V. Williamson with admiration. Probably that mother went to the store in her early married days, and yet she talked to her daughter so enthusiastically about the Philadelphia philanthropist in his storekeeping days that Mrs. ”

“ It is interesting to consider the conditions that existed in Philadelphia during the decade in which Isaiah Williamson rose to the position of the city's foremost drygoods merchant, and to speak of other men with whom he began to come into contact in the business life of the city. ”

“ He set for all young men a splendid example in walking as a youth from his mother's door to the last day of his life on the straight road of unspotted honor, truthfulness and highest integrity. A good beginning makes a good ending. ”

“ The man most talked about in Philadelphia, when Isaiah Williamson first came to town, was Stephen Girard—the merchant and mariner, who stood first on the roll of its eminent citizens. Girard's vast wealth and business successes were constantly referred to with wonder and praise. He had begun in poverty, peddled oranges on the streets of Philadelphia, and advanced slowly, step by step, to the first place in its business world. ”

“ Mr. Wanamaker's own autograph notes of conversations with Alfred Helmbold, and Frank Williamson, "regarding Isaiah V. Williamson." Ms. biographical data of Williamson family, including many letters, and the will of William Williamson, filed January 22, 1721. Account book of Isaiah V. Williamson. Collection of mementoes of Isaiah V. Williamson. One bound scrap book containing numerous newspaper clippings about Isaiah V. Williamson, and packages of news articles of various dates. Collection of biographical data prepared by the Evening Telegraph staff at the time of Mr. ”

“ Let the young fellow of good ancestry never forget that he starts with what the lack of to many another is a lifelong handicap. It is a great thing for any man to be well-born.
Isaiah Vansant Williamson found in his early years that he had much to be proud of in his ancestry, and doubtless his resolve not to do anything to tarnish the memory of their honorable and useful lives held him firmly to the upright course of life that marks every footstep of his long and busy days. ”

“ Isaiah was in good health, with a probability of years to give to making money for himself.
He had found out that he could not only amass wealth, but also do what many others could not do. He could organize himself to control the saving of it. Not needing it for himself, he had no right to wrap his talent in a napkin but turn it over and over to the utmost for others needing to be helped. ”

“ Having voluntarily retired from business, because he was not ambitious to go farther either for fame or riches, when he returned to America he was for a short time at a standstill as to what his future life was to be. ”

“ At the time of his retirement he had the reputation of being one of the richest young merchants in Philadelphia, and he was much praised because his money was the result of his own effort.
It was not uncommon in the past for business men to fix an age or the amassing of a certain sum of money as the time of retiring from business. ”

“ How much the little man from Bucks County, low in stature, high in thinking, deep in feeling, suffered in the forty years of dignity, patience and silence while he was in the wilderness of public opinion, nobody knows. ”

“ I never could understand why so many people sacrifice time, talent and money to obtain Copies of Nature, when the originals which ought to be, and are, so much more beautiful, are open and free to all without money and without price. ”

“ There is inspiration in the story of the Bensalem lad who, in a simple way, amassed a great fortune and used it wisely during his life by sinking wells and safeguarding them, that their life-giving streams might flow on through the ages to come. ”

“ It is at least open to doubt whether the man who makes two colleges stand where one was enough before has rendered a real service; but a school like this will fill a great want, and is a sign of a wise reaction. The venerable man who lightens up his closing years with an act of such splendid magnificence may take some pleasure in the thought that he has illustrated the existence of the purest motives that can guide the human soul, and has helped to give men a better opinion of mankind. ”

“ It is possible that Williamson came across the saying a member of Parliament once shrewdly uttered, out of personal observation as one of the laboring class, that "charity creates much of the misery it relieves, but does not relieve all the misery it creates." ”

“ People liked to talk about everything Girard did. His peculiar walk, old gig, his one eye and his queue, his odd coat and characteristic speech, always enlisted the young countryman's interest and admiration. He thought often of the fact that Stephen Girard had not accomplished large financial results until he was past forty. For ten years, he listened to all that was said of Girard, and during that ten years, until Girard died in 1831, he watched him as a young beginner always watches the older business leaders of their time. ”