Illustrations from History I

Travel back 50 years to the mahogany-paneled office of Sewell Avery, then chairman of Montgomery Ward & Co. Avery was responsible for Ward's failure to open a single new store from 1941 to 1957. Instead, the big retailer piled up cash—and then sat on it. Ward's amassed $607 million, earning them a dubious Wall Street nickname: "the bank with the department store front."

So why didn't Avery join in the nation's postwar expansion by following Americans to the suburbs? He held firmly to the belief and vision that a depression had followed every major war since the time of Napoleon. "Who am I to argue with history?" Avery demanded. "Why build $14-a-foot buildings when we soon can do it for $3-a-foot?"

On the other side of Chicago, Ward's rival, Sears, Roebuck & Co., had a different idea. In 1946, Sears gambled its future and began a costly expansion into suburbia. Had another depression occurred, Sears would have been financially devastated. Instead, Sears doubled its revenues while Ward's stood still. Sears never looked back, and Ward's never caught up. In fact, Ward's eventually went bankrupt.

How could corporate planning go so wrong? Montgomery Ward's postwar troubles sprang from its firm adherence to an idea from a different time and culture. Because Sewell Avery thought a depression would follow World War II, and because he failed to see that middle-America was moving to the suburbs, he misread the cultural waves and consequently his business wiped out.

There are two ways to look at history.  We can, like Ward, study one aspect of history and ignore others, or we can study all aspects and facets of history and then Take the lessons and make history.

Looking backward into history and forward to the future it is obvious that both yesterday and tomorrow come to their focus in today. The ever­lasting now is the strange and imperceptible link between what has been and what is to be. It is all we have of time to digest the meaning of the past and to fashion the future. As John Greenleaf  Whittier wrote:

The Present, the Present is all thou hast

For thy sure possessing.

Like the Patriarch’s angel hold it fast

Till it gives its blessing.

It is the eternal now that holds in its hands either life’s blessing or its curse.

Whittier’s reference to “the Patriarch’s angel” is suggestive. It refers to Jacob, who “wrestled all night with a man.” He struggled through the night with the guardian angel in his own soul. Jacob, you will remember, was returning home after years of remorse and guilt. Once he had stolen his brother’s birthright through trickery and deception. Through the years he had done well enough for himself. Indeed, he was wealthy. But he knew he had lost the integrity of his own soul before God. Now he was but a day’s journey from home and he was afraid. What would Esau do?

As the night fell, Jacob divided his flocks and his retainers in the in­terest of safety, went off to a lonely place, and there he wrestled all night with himself. Should he go on home or turn back? The record says he grappled with the issue all night, and when dawn touched the eastern sky, he cried aloud, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Then, in a great moment, Jacob met Esau and the future with forgiveness and hope.

This book is the first volume of illustrations from history.  There will be at least one, and perhaps two, more.  We need to look at what history shows us and apply them to the here and now, and then go with their lessons into the future.  This is the overwhelming power of illustrations.