This article was taken from the Motiograph trade magazine "The Sound Track" - VOL. 1, NO. 6 - OCTOBER, 1943
For some reason that I am not entirely able to comprehend, the
average person seems to compare me with some sort of legendary figure of
the past-a living connection, as it were, with the great bygone era when
many of our giant commercial enterprises were founded. This amuses me.
While not active in any business at the present time, I am certainly
very active mentally in my interest in the business world of 1943.
Looking backward, I find that the intervening years were not only
most interesting and exciting, but to me they are just as realistic and
lifelike as today. True, many of my well known and capable associates of
the past are no longer among the living, but on my occasional visits to
the Motiograph plant, I still find myself greeted by former employees
who worked with me in an enterprise to which I devoted a large part of
my business life.
The founding of what is today known as Motiograph is so closely
associated with the early history of Sears, Roebuck and Co. that I must
relate something of the establishment of the "World's Largest Store". To
do so requires that I tell something of myself and of my old friend and
business associate, Richard Warren Sears.
My family is traceable back to early Colonial days, when my
ancestors first settled in Virginia. I was born in Lafayette, Indiana,
where my father was superintendent of bridge construction for the Wabash
Railroad. When I was three years old, a serious accident to my father
occasioned our removing to a farm a short distance outside that city.
Possessed of a natural mechanical instinct, I first turned my
attention to watch repairing, perhaps because of a watch which I
inherited from my father and which had no defects other than it did not
run, because it needed cleaning and oiling. Mainly with the aid of
home-made tools, I succeeded in fixing my watch, and with the knowledge
thus acquired, repaired the watches of many of my schoolmates and
neighbors. My price for fixing watches was twenty-five-cents.
My great ambition at that time was to become a professional
watchmaker, with a view eventually of having a store of my own. In these
days, when the most liberal inducements are held out to labor, it amuses
me to recall that the net result of my efforts to secure employment in
Lafayette was an offer from a jeweler to take me as an apprentice if I
paid him forty dollars a month for a period of three years! As my
financial circumstances did not permit me to take advantage of his
lavish generosity, I formed the bold resolve of going elsewhere to seek
my fortune, and on May 10th, 1886, secured a position as a watchmaker
and engraver in a jewelry store in Hammond, Indiana.
This step led indirectly to my now somewhat celebrated association
with Mr. Sears.
He was coming up the hard way at this time. A distressed shipment of
watches in the small Minnesota town in which he lived had given him the
idea of disposing of them by means of "mail order"-which consisted of
handwritten letter to railroad men in the vicinity. The venture thus
begun so modestly grew until in 1886 he was able to open up a regular
business in Minneapolis, which in the following year was established in
Chicago as the R. W. Sears Watch Co.
Mr. Sears-equipped with a small office and but few employees-ran an
advertisement for a watchmaker in the classified columns of the Chicago
Daily News. I read his advertisement, but I went to bed without
answering it. Then I sensed a strange premonition which on several
occasions has seemed to guide my actions. I thought, "only a few minutes
time and a postage stamp," which prompted me to arise and write what was
probably the most important letter of my life. Suffice it to say that a
few days later I had my first meeting with Mr. Sears-and landed the job.
My relations with Mr. Sears during the next several years, while
full of interest, have no direct bearing on my present story. In March
1889-two years after our first association-Sears sold his Chicago
business to A. T. Evens, a brother-in-law of the Butler Brothers family,
while I purchased his branch in Toronto, Canada, giving in equity my
three Chicago lots and my notes for the balance. Within two years I had
paid off my notes to Sears, and was able to open a branch office in
Buffalo, New York.
On April 2, 1892, Sears and I established a mail order business in
Minneapolis which was known as A. C. Roebuck and Co. This name was changed
to Sears, Roebuck and Co. on Aug. 23, 1893, and in January of 1895 we
moved the business to Chicago.
Now we have reached the point where Motiograph came into being. At
this time there was little in the way of entertainment for residents of
smaller cities and towns, other than amateur theatricals and an
occasional circus. I conceived the idea of offering for sale an
"entertainment outfit," by means of which the purchaser might liven up
church social activities and at the same time earn some extra money for
himself and for the church. As the talking machine was then a novelty,
our first outfit featured a phonograph, records and all necessary
accessory equipment.
Motiograph really began its existence in 1896, when we switched to a
magic lantern and thus entered the projection field. The complete outfit
consisted of a magic lantern, a choice of several sets of from fifty-two
to eighty slides, a supply of advertising posters and admission tickets,
a book of instructions, etc.
Perhaps at this point the reader may indulge in a tolerant smile at
the simpler amusements of the preceding generation, but let me say that
the magic lantern idea was a huge success. Orders poured in from all
parts of the country, and within a very short time the sale of
entertainment outfits constituted an appreciable portion of our
business.
It was largely that I might devote all of my time to Motiograph,
then known as the Enterprise Optical Mfg. Co., that about 1897 I
disposed of my interests in Sears, Roebuck and Co. to Mr. Sears. Two years
later, with a feeling of sorrow and in opposition to the wishes of Mr.
Sears, I resigned from the company which we had founded.