He did not have to wait that long. Again the business--in the hands of hard-working born merchandisers--prospered, from the very instant of its beginning. It opened for selling and made its first sale, June 1, 1866. And again within a few short weeks, L. Straus & Son was demanding more room for expansion, and getting it--this time in the form of a ground floor and basement of that same building in Chambers Street. It was still both new and young, however. Its hired employees were but three: a packer, his helper and a selector, or stock-room man. Isidor Straus ran all the details of the store, opening it and closing it each day and acting as its book-keeper, until a year later when Nathan Straus came into the organization, becoming its first salesman. The business was getting ahead. Despite the difficulties and the humbleness of its start it had sold more than $60,000 worth of goods, in the first twelve months of its existence. "That they were hard months, I could not deny," said Isidor Straus of them in after years. "We had bought our house in West Forty-ninth Street, so that we might have our family life together, just as we had had in those pleasant Georgia days of before the war. More than once we contemplated selling the house so that we might put the proceeds in the business, but always at the last moment we were able to avoid that great catastrophe." And soon the necessity of ever selling the house was past. Prosperity multiplied. The firm went beyond selling the ordinary grades of crockery, which America had only known up to that time--serviceable stuff, but thick and clumsy and heavy--and began the importation upon a huge and increasing scale, of the more delicate and beautiful porcelains of Europe. It added manufacturing to its importations. It became an authority upon fine China. And Nathan Straus, its salesman, had to scurry to keep apace with its growth--already he was becoming known as a super-salesman. He extended his territory to the West and in 1869--the year of the completion of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads--was going to the West Coast in search for customers. Two years later--a few weeks after the great fire--he opened a selling-office for the firm in Chicago. "Yet I do not like this travel," he said a little later to his brother. "Not only is it very hard, physically, but I find that as soon as I get away from it the orders fall off. We have to work too hard for the volume of profit in hand."