subject, and one is compelled to look elsewhere for the facts of how the commercial houses imposed at high prices shoddy material and semi-putrid food upon the very army and navy that fought for their interests.9 In the words of one of Field's laudatory biographers, "the firm coined money"—a phrase which for the volumes of significant meaning embodied in it, is an epitome of the whole profit system.
Some of the personnel of the firm changed several times: in 1865 Field, Leiter and Potter Palmer (who had also become a multimillionaire) associated under the firm name of Field, Leiter & Palmer. The great fire of 1871 destroyed the firm's buildings, but they were replaced. Subsequently the firm became Field, Leiter & Co., and, finally in 1887, Marshall Field & Co.10 The firm conducted both a wholesale and retail business on what is called in commercial slang "a cash basis:" that is, it sold goods on immediate payment and not on credit. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year.