 | Eli Perkins (at large) |  |
TWO HUNDRED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!
Two hundred what!
Two hundred millions of dollars; and that is just the
amount of money and credits which the twelve great
business houses following this page represent.
Twelve such solid, substantial, and time-worn business
establishments were never before collected together in
America. Each house is acknowledged by general consent
to be the leading house in its line in this country;
their cards are not placed in this book for any personal
gain, but they are placed here that posterity may know
about the richest and most respectable business houses
which have honored the present century. It is a matter
of pure benevolence.
For example:—The house of Chickering & Sons
is placed in this book because it has made and sold
47,000 of the best pianos produced during the century;
Brewster & Co. of Broome street, because everybody
from London to San Francisco has ridden or dreamed
of riding in one of their carriages;
Herring & Co., because their safes in Europe and
America are known to be the strongest and the most
thoroughly fire and burglar proof;
Tiffany & Co., because their great house makes the
fashions in jewelry for the continent, and because they
sell more diamonds, and bronzes, and silver, and precious
stones than all the jewellers in the United States;
Dunlap & Co., because their immense factory has
placed their hats on every gentleman's head from Saratoga
to New Orleans;
Otis Brothers & Co., because their passenger elevators
have no competition for absolute safety and beauty, and
because they are universally adopted;
The Fifth Avenue Hotel, because it has been for
twenty-five years the largest, most elegant, and most aristocratic
hotel in the great Empire City;
The Domestic Sewing-Machine Company, because they
sell the lightest running machine, and more of them, than
any other sewing-machine company in this country;
The Mutual Life Insurance Company, because it is the
oldest, and because its $72,000,000 in money and credits
make it the solidest, insurance company in the world;
John Foley's gold pens, because one of them wrote
this book, and because they are used by everybody;
Caswell, Hazard & Co., because for one hundred years
—almost four generations—their house has been the
leading drug house in America;
The Hanover Fire Insurance Company, because it is
the most venerable institution of its class, in New York;
Brooks Brothers, because for half-a-century they have
maintained the largest clothing house in the country;
The John Russell Cutlery Company, because their
Green River Cutlery Works cover more ground and turn
out more and better cutlery than any other establishment
in the world, Sheffield not excepted;
Heiter & Gans, because their umbrella manufactory is
the largest in the world, and because they have just paid
$200,000 for their new automatic umbrella patent, which
every future umbrella must have;
The Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga, because James H.
Breslin keeps it, and because A. T. Stewart, with his
$60,000,000, has made it the costliest and grandest
watering place hotel in the whole world; and
Enoch Morgan's Sons, because John Morgan's Sapolio
has become a household word and a household necessity
from Rome to the Rocky Mountains, wherever the
English or any other civilized language is spoken.
| Eli Perkins (at large) | |