Hahn, Inc.

Hahn, Department Stores, Inc., last week announced the merger of 22 department stores, forming a unit capitalized at $60,000,000 and with aggregate 1927 sales of more than $100,000,000. The 22 stores --the best known of which is Boston's Jordan Marsh--will form the nucleus of what Lew Hahn hopes to make the largest chain-store organization in the world. President Hahn of the new combination, forsees a billion dollar department chain with annual turnover exceeding F.W. Woolworth, United Cigar, or Atlantic & Pacific. Various units will continue to operate under present managements, President George W. Mitton of Jordan Marsh, for example, continuing at his post and also becoming Chairman of Hahn Department Stores, Inc.

Ten years as managing director of the National Retail Dry Goods Association gave Lew Hahn intimate knowledge of department stores, plus "reputation," of which he had almost none when he began wrapping up shoes in Andrew Alexander's shop.

Largest store in the Hahn combine is Jordan Marsh Co. of Boston. For 78 years Boston shoppers have been going to Jordan Marsh's, which, during the U.S. Civil War, did a large cotton business through the energy and shrewdness of a young employe named James Fisk. When the war was over, the Jordan Marsh Co. found that Fisk's temperament was not adapted to peacetime merchandising, ousted him. Fisk went on to a career of high finance, became the Jim Fisk of Black Friday*and similar notoriety.

* Friday, Sept. 24, 1869, when Jim Fisk and Jay Gould tried cornering the gold market.