At the same time, being sane and conservative, he had resolutely avoided speculation.  The solid and substantial called to him.  Clerking at eleven dollars a week, he took note of the lost opportunities, of the openings for safe enterprise, of the countless leaks in the business.  If, despite all this, the boss could make a good living, what couldn’t he, Josiah Childs, do with his Connecticut training?  It was like a bottle of wine to a thirsty hermit, this coming to the active, generous-spending West after thirty-five years in East Falls, the last fifteen of which had been spent in humdrum clerking in the humdrum East Falls general store.  Josiah Childs’ head buzzed with the easy possibilities he saw.  But he did not lose his head.  No detail was overlooked.  He spent his spare hours in studying Oakland, its people, how they made their money, and why they spent it and where.  He walked the central streets, watching the drift of the buying crowds, even counting them and compiling the statistics in various notebooks.  He studied the general credit system of the trade, and the particular credit systems of the different districts.  He could tell to a dot the average wage or salary earned by the householders of any locality, and he made it a point of thoroughness to know every locality from the waterfront slums to the aristocratic Lake Merritt and Piedmont sections, from West Oakland, where dwelt the railroad employes, to the semi-farmers of Fruitvale at the opposite end of the city.

Broadway, on the main street and in the very heart of the shopping district, where no grocer had ever been insane enough to dream of establishing a business, was his ultimate selection.  But that required money, while he had to start from the smallest of beginnings.  His first store was on lower Filbert, where lived the nail-workers.  In half a year, three other little corner groceries went out of business while he was compelled to enlarge his premises.  He understood the principle of large sales at small profits, of stable qualities of goods, and of a square deal.  He had glimpsed, also, the secret of advertising.  Each week he set forth one article that sold at a loss to him.  This was not an advertised loss, but an absolute loss.  His one clerk prophesied impending bankruptcy when butter, that cost Childs thirty cents, was sold for twenty-five cents, when twenty-two-cent coffee was passed across the counter at eighteen cents.  The neighbourhood housewives came for these bargains and remained to buy other articles that sold at a profit.  Moreover, the whole neighbourhood came quickly to know Josiah Childs, and the busy crowd of buyers in his store was an attraction in itself.

But Josiah Childs made no mistake.  He knew the ultimate foundation on which his prosperity rested.  He studied the nail works until he came to know as much about them as the managing directors.  Before the first whisper had stirred abroad, he sold his store, and with a modest sum of ready cash went in search of a new location.  Six months later the nail works closed down, and closed down forever.