Bon Voyage

Dignified ladies of Manhattan's first families have been going into Charles & Co. for decades to get the best in damson preserves and Cheddar cheese and other good things. Last week some of them went in to order the famous Charles fruit baskets for friends going off to sea. "Madam," said the clerks, "we have only a few left. We cannot promise." Charles & Co., last of Manhattan's big, elderly, fine-food shops, was selling out.

Upstairs, where Charles higher-ups work in offices as cluttered as the back rooms of country stores, President George Ruckdeschel said he was "too low" to discuss the reasons why the store was closing. Low in spirit but not so taciturn was Chairman William A. Charles. Behind his roller-top desk, looking like a baffled and unhappy small-town grocer, this tall, grey-haired, 70-year-old son of the store's founder talked of Charles & Co.'s rise & fall.

Just go years ago, he said, an ambitious youngster fresh from Ireland named Andrew Charles opened a plain grocery store on the corner of Orchard and Delancey Streets, Manhattan. His cousin George soon joined him. In the late 505 the pair moved way uptown (22nd Street) to cater to the carriage trade. As the city grew, George urged moving again; Andrew wanted to stay near Gramercy Park. George moved, Andrew stayed. George proved the wiser, for the very year he set up on 43rd Street, Grand Central Station moved right across the street, and his store flourished.

Besides its line of hearty staples, Charles began to stock delicacies high of tang and price--pate with truffles, cocks' combs and kidneys, diamondback rattlesnake. In 1885 it invented the steamer fruit basket, which proved so popular that Charles & Co. registered and still holds the grocery trade-mark "Bon Voyage." By 1929, with a list of steady customers that looked like a distillation of the social register, the com-pany was grossing some $5,000,000 a year.

Chairman William says labor was one of the main reasons the company fell so far and so fast. About two years ago truck drivers, charged with as many as 650 steamer baskets a day, began to report that longshoremen refused to handle the baskets because the drivers were nonunion. The drivers organized. Then they themselves objected to taking hot goods from non-union warehousemen. The warehousemen organized. So, in turn, did the grocery clerks, and the office force, until Charles & Co. was 100% union. All this, says Chairman William, cost the firm between $52,000 and $55,000 annually in wages.

Not that Mr. Charles dislikes his employes. He is very fond of many--like old Fred McEwen, who has worked for the store 51 years, and Tom O'Sullivan, who has been there 46 years. Average tenure of Charles employes is 20 years; many have never done anything else.

When he talks about his family, Mr. Charles gets pink--and the flush is not always of pride. His father Andrew and Uncle George married two sisters, Martha and Emily Clark. Andrew and George had differences. And their doubly-related descendants have honored the family tradition. Not long after William succeeded his late cousin Howard (son of George) as president, a family faction had him sidetracked to the chairmanship on the grounds that he was getting old. Then one faction urged modernizing the store; another wanted the status quo. In 1935 a 45-year-old, high-pressure executive named Victor Hugo Hamf was finally hired. He spent $10,000 on a "Hostess Shop," hired younger salespeople, revised the bookkeeping. But streamlining Charles & Co. was like streamlining a horse and buggy; it did not take.

Chairman Charles offers other reasons. For one thing the nature of the business was germane to boom times, not bad times. Delivering a jar of caviar to goth Street was all very well; not so a loaf of bread, a pound of coffee. And chains--with low overhead, mass purchases and many good standard brands--cut in plenty.

Last week, without a splurge of advertising (not in character), the store began selling out its $287,000 stock-on-hand at 20% reduction. Mr. Charles thought three weeks would clear the shelves; $7,000 worth of recently-ordered plum pudding worries him not at all. He has a customer for the name, the goodwill, the futures contracts, the trademark and the trucks.

Such a throng of sentimental and thrifty people rushed to the sale that for the first time in 90 years Charles & Co. was forced to close its doors during store hours. The crowd was then put in line, handled like any cinema overflow. The 220 Charles employes were loyal to the store, resentful of the newfangled ways that had helped to kill it. One customer asked a busy saleswoman on the second floor: "Is this the Hostess Shop?" Said the clerk: "Ha, it was, madam, or so they say it was. I never thought so. Not me."

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