1921 Duluth & St Louis County MN, Van Brunt.pdf - Garon.us

DULUTH AND ST. LOUIS COUNTY 749
merchant, president of the First National Bank and otherwise extensively
interested in northern Ohio business. His fifth child was
Albert M. Marshall, who grew up and was educated in the schools of
Painesville. At the age of nineteen he went to Saginaw and entered
the shipping room of Morley Brothers, hardware merchants. For
twenty-two years he remained with that firm, and when he left was
vice president and general manager and had demonstrated the faculty
of gathering about him and infusing his personal influence through
a splendid organization. He was also president of the U. S. Graphite
Compan}- and the Lufkin Rule Company, which he had started at
Cleveland and later moved to Saginaw.
In the face of conditions that prevailed in 1893 it is possible to
credit Mr. ^Marshall with nothing less than extraordinary vision and
courage in surrendering his attractive and promising interests in
Michigan and elsewhere and taking hold of a proposition at Duluth
that promised a constant battle as a precedent for growth and success.
In the spring of 1893 he acquired the controlling interest in the
Chapin-\Vells Hardware Company, the name being changed to the
Marshall-Wells Hardware Company. The chief owner of the Wells
interests, C. W. Wells, was drowned the same fall while duck hunting,
and his partner. F. C. Stone, died three months later. Their estates were
represented in the Marshall-Wells directorate for some years. Mr.
^Marshall in the meantime was left to fight out the battle almost alone.
With the beginning of the panic of 1893 there was a general shut
down of mines, lumber operations, railway extension, but he persisted
in maintaining his business organization and even added to
his force of salesmen, soliciting business all over the northwestern
country. The wisdom of this step was proved several years later,
when with the gradual lifting of panic conditions it was found that the
Marshall-Wells Company had become securely entrenched in all the
northern and northwestern states and even in Canada and Alaska.
In the midst of trying conditions in 1894 Mr. Marshall began the
preparation of a complete catalogue that would represent every article
carried in stock, and at that time the "Zenith" trade mark was
adoi)ted. which for a quarter of a century has been the guarantee of
(|uality on all gcjods distriliuted by this firm.
One of the chief sources of success to the Marshall-Wells organization
has been Mr. Marshall's faculty of picking and retaining the
right sort of men in his organization. He entrusted a young Canadian
w ith first o])ening up an international business for the firm in
Canada, and with the Klondike gold discoveries of 1898 the emissaries
(^f the Marshall-Wells Company were soon within the .Arctic
Circle. Out of this venture develojjed the great business handled by
the firm in the Canadian northwest through W'inniiieg. where the
first warehouse of the comj)any was established in 1901. In 1901 the
company also rented a barn in Portland. Oregon, as the first warehouse
of the Portland branch, and within less than ten years several
successive buildings were erected by the firm in that city, until the
Portland branch now handles business from the Pacific northwest to
Los -Angeles and the Imperial Walley of California. Through the
Portland house was also done a large exj^ort business to the Hawaiian
Islands, and more recentl\' to Russia and China. The S])okane branch
of the firm was ojjened in January, 1900, to serve the great trade of
the inland empire. In July, 1912. was incorporated the Marshall-
W ('lis .Alberta Company, which took over jirevious connections of the
firm and an old established business at lulmonton. .Alberta, and this
Vol. 11—16