Ethics for South State Street

For years Chicago's State Street Council has been among the world's proudest trade associations. Its members are the great midwestern merchants (Marshall Field, Carson Pirie Scott, The Fair, etc.) that line the upper part of Chicago's No. 1 shopping thoroughfare. But south of Van Buren Street, lower boundary of the "L" loop, there is an equally famous part of State Street: a scabrous collection of saloons, shooting galleries, hock shops, flea markets, peep shows, "red hot" burlesques and flophouses ("clean quiet comfort for 30-c-"), smack in the middle of Chicago's notorious First Ward, once an important Al Capone domain.

South State Street's small-time merchants were naturally never invited to join the haughty State Street Council. Finally, prodded by local pride, they formed their own club, the South State Street Merchants Association. Last week the Association proudly presented its new 14-point Code of Ethics. Items:

> "It is considered unethical practice to entice or persuade people to enter a store who have only stopped to look at the window displays."

> "All articles advertised shall be made available upon inquiry without accompanying remarks of disparagement."

> "In no case should any dealer . . . engage in ... misrepresenting merchandise as being of a greater quality than it actually is, or being new when it is secondhand."

> "Never try to injure directly or indirectly the business reputation or prospects of a competitor or fellow merchant, or make disparaging statements or insinuations relative to his merchandise, prices, business, financial or personal standing."

Said greying, 44-year-old Pawnbroker Gus Rosenthal of the State Jewelry & Loan Co., first president of the South State Street Merchants Association: "The idea is we should be neighborly. All the racketeers and burglars I seen on this street they drop dead and what have they got? They didn't enjoy theirselves, they just rotted away. You don't see no dope fiends and no female impersonators or any of them funny people any more, the city has cleaned that up. ... Up on the other side of the street they get all lighted up for Christmas and they hang out flags on the holiday and they do a real business.

We got to do things like that." Said 48-year-old Joe Levy of the Mid-State Drug Co., secretary of the Association: ". . . Only 30 or 40 has signed the code. It's mostly a matter of I just got married on July 1 and I haven't had time to go around and see everybody." But, said another: "I would say that the main aim somebody had to come along and tell me yet."

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