The Economy: The Great Shopping Spree

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Through the hordes of January sales shoppers in Macy's Manhattan store last week moved one of the toughest customers ever to confront a salesperson. As the board chairman of R. H. Macy & Co., Jack Isidor Straus is not only the biggest man in the world's biggest store but the chief executive of a 49-store chain that serves 110 million people a year. Yet Jack Straus, at 64, enjoys none of his duties so much as that of playing the indignant consumer. A man with the saucer eyes and eager...