Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

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Famous People Column – An open Column for all writers

February 22, 2007

February 22^nd. – presented by Hart Dowd

It was on this date in 1879 that Frank Woolworth opened a variety department store in Utica, New York.  One year after that first Woolworth’s opened, the term five-and-ten made its print debut.  The name five-and-ten  (or five-and-dime) recognized the fact that the articles in such stores were usually priced at either five or ten cents.  Although inflation ha has eroded the term’s association with pricing, five-and-ten or five-and-dime are still used to refer to “a retail store that carries chiefly inexpensive merchandise, as notions and household goods.

Two terms long associated with five-and-ten caught our linguistic eye: sundries and trinkets.  Sundries, meaning “miscellaneous small articles, details, or items,: has its roots in a Middle English adjective meaning “different for each.”  Since the 13^th century, the adjective sundry has been used to mean “miscellaneous, various;” the plural known sundries is an 18^th century coinage.

Five-and-dimes stock more than sundries; they’re also the place shoppers turn to for trinkets. A trinket is a trifle, or “a thing of little value.”  That word date back to the mid-16^th century, and it has plenty of synonyms, ranging from the now-archaic trangam to the British dialectal trantlam to the more common dido, doodad, and whinwham.

But the real big money lay in tending to masses of low and middle class consumers, who benefited from the raising purchasing power, the industrial revolution brought. Recognizing that whereas prime locations were difficult to find and increasingly expensive in large cities, shrewd merchants decentralized the concept of department stores and established their bargaining power by operating chains of stores in smaller cities. The concept was brought further by the “Nickel and Dime” or “5 and 10 cents” store moguls, whose leading figure was Frank Winfield Woolworth. Working in loose association with a number of friendly rivals, including his brother Charles and their cousin Seymour Horace Knox, he built a chain of over 300 stores until 1912, when he merged them with the other associates’ firms to form the $65 million F.W. Woolworth Company. His archrival Sebastian S. Kresge built an equally impressive empire of chain stores. 

Frank W. Woolworth, pioneer of the five and dime stores

Frank W. Woolworth had a keen eye for business. The forerunner of the clearance table today--was quick to realize that a store of nothing but nickel priced merchandise would attract the frugal housewives.

Frank Woolworth was born in 1852 in the state of New York. He came from a line of farmers. Frank's father owned 108 acres for growing crops like potatoes, and eight cows for making dairy products.

Frank followed in line. After graduation at the age of sixteen, he worked fulltime on the family farm. But he dreamed of indoor work. Frank Woolworth wanted to be a merchant.

That's exactly what he became, even if it meant working the first three months without pay. He started with Augsbury & Moore, a leading drygoods sore, as low-man on the totem pole, sweeping floors, cleaning up. Over the next six years he worked his way up to clerk, ten dollars a week, a lovely Canadian wife, a four-acre farm and the birth of his first child.

And a new fad started--the five-cent table, a forerunner of a clearance table. Merchants would take their leftover merchandise and mark it down to a nickel. Then it would go on the five-cent table. Housewives would snatch up the bargains, and end up buying regularly-priced merchandise as well.

Eventually the fad died down. But Frank believed the idea could flourish. What if there were a store that sold nothing but five-cent merchandise?

Hartson S. Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net