The following excerpt is taken from an article in the Boston Daily Globe printed on November 9, 1913, p. 2, and gives interesting insight into Benjamin F. Dutton’s success and personality. It also inspires an amusing mental image of Houghton & Dutton customers wheeling around downtown Boston in rickshaws!

Mr. B. F. Dutton is 82 years old – going on 83 – but he comes to the store nearly every day and “boxes the compass” for “the boys,” so that there will be no mistake about the navigation of the business. He is still the captain of the ship and he lays out the course to be followed, although he had great confidence in the three other officers, his “boys,” as he calls them. There are two sons, Harry Dutton and George Conant Dutton, the vice presidents of the concern, and his son-in-law, Alexander McGregor, treasurer. He has taught all three of these to navigate the business and they can do it so well that whenever the captain goes away for a week or a month or two months he always finds on his return that the navigating officers have done their work well and perhaps have ventured into an unchartered sea with success.

When asked what he attributed the success of his business mainly to, Mr. B. F. Dutton replied:

“I guess it was due at the beginning to hard work as much as anything else. Mr. Houghton and myself were in the store early and late and looked after everything. We had no buyers at that time. He and I did all the buying. One year I did the whole of it myself. That was one of the hardest years I every put in. “Sam” Houghton was a great buyer though. One year he went on an excursion trip to San Francisco, and when he got there he decided to go to Japan. He sent home a shipload of goods, including some jinrikishas, and the people in the other stores laughed at us. We sold every bit of those goods and at a handsome profit, and we have been sending buyers to Japan ever since. I think we were the first firm to send buyers to Japan annually.”

“One great reason why department stores have, as a rule, been successful is that they have buyers. They trade very little through jobbers. The buyers go straight to the factories in Europe and buy the goods just as the jobber used to. In fact the department store has hurt the jobbing business more than any other business.”

Interviewer: “Do you think the department store has reached its limit?”

“What do you mean?”

Interviewer: “Is there any possibility of chains of department stores?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t like doing business beyond arm’s length. Sam Houghton had an idea something like that and at one time we had small stores in various parts of the city. But it never paid. I know that the chain store idea has been very successful in some lines, but I don’t believe it could be applied to the real department store. That’s big enough business for anybody just as it is.”

“There is one thing further I would like to say about our own success here. I said that at first it was due to hard work. That is always necessary, but in any business in which you are dealing directly with the public something more is necessary. You must get and retain the confidence of the buying public. That can only be secured by fair and honest dealing with the public at all times. You must be consistent in it, for the public is sensitive on that point. It is only carrying out the policy of the best country stores where all met on common footing and every man knows every other man’s business, and where common honesty and fair dealing is the rule.”

Interviewer: “How about the employees – aren’t they a factor in the success of a business of this kind?”

“Yes, and a most important factor. Unless there is a spirit of sympathy and cooperation among the employees of a business of this magnitude the business is not going to be a very great success. And there is nothing that hurts an employee more than a lack of sympathy and a lack of the spirit of cooperation with the business in which he is engaged. It works both ways, it hurts the employer and it hurts the employee.”

“In our business we have always been fortunate in the spirit of loyalty of our employees, and I think this is even more marked today through the length and breadth of this establishment in which we have more than 2000 employees, than ever before.”