Harry Gordon Selfridge

The Phoenicians a thousand years before the Christian era were fearless, progressive and splendid, but... [t]hey traded individually as did the Venetians and even the great s of Augsburg, leaving no trace of that ability which selects and …

One of the chief differences between the commerce of the sixteenth century and of the twentieth lies in the wonderful and complicated organizations of the present day. Their magnitude makes even the largest of those of which we have been …

Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an art, a science, a profession.

as necessary to the existence of any nation as blood to the physical man.

If Commerce is necessary to wealth, no Commerce means no wealth, and our statesman soon finds himself out of employment. Where wealth again is greatest, everything else being fairly equal, arts thrive the most.

Commerce creates wealth, and it is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments …

[W]ithout Commerce there is no wealth.

Ever since that moment when two individuals first lived upon this earth, one has had what the other wanted, and has been willing for a consideration to part with his possession. This is the principle underlying all trade however primitive, …

The desire to trade seems to be inherent in man, as natural to him as the instinct of self-preservation, and from earliest recorded history we see trade and barter entering into and becoming part of the lives of men of all nations... [W]e …

To write on Commerce or Trade and do the subject justice would require more volumes than any library could hold, and involve more detail than any mind could grasp. It would be a history in extenso of the world's people from the beginning …

whose efforts are unitedly making the world busier, happier, richer, and more able to provide the good things of life, this volume is dedicated

to those who look upon work as glorious and to be sought