[T]he great Distributing House or Department Store

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 …

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, …

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

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

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 …

[W]ithout Commerce there is no wealth.