Personnel

Last week the following was news:

Lew Hahn. chairman of Hahn Department Stores, Inc., announced last week that his contract with the company would expire Aug. 31, would not be renewed. From 1918 to 1928 as managing director of National Retail Dry Goods Association he was consulting expert for stores all over the country on how retailing could be done profitably. In the merger era of 1928 he came to the conclusion that department stores like everything else could be profitably run in chains. So 22 stores straddling the U. S. from Seattle to Greensboro. N. C.--largest of them Jordan Marsh of Boston--were merged in Hahn Department Stores, Inc. Lehman Brothers and Prince & Whitely floated the stock. Lew Hahn became president. Like many a boom-launched ship, it ran into rough water. The stores' pre-Depression earnings of $6,000,000 a year promptly fell to $4,000,000 in 1929, to $2,500,000 in 1930, dropped to a deficit of $300,000 for 1931, to a deficit of $3,747,000 for 1932. Two years ago Lew Hahn was boosted to chairman of the board, Paul Quattlander made president. Now Hahn is quietly dropped. Meantime, however, he has become president of National Retail Dry Goods Association, has directed the drafting of the Dry Goods code. Last week having lost his store job, he offered his resignation to the Association. The Association, having relied on him from of old, refused to accept it.

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