In the half-hour which elapses between eight and eight-thirty, many of the minor executives--particularly those of the selling floors--make their appearance at the designated doors upon the side streets. In the parlance of the organization these are known as "specials" and are divided into several classes, denoting chiefly their connection with its selling or non-selling forces. They "sign in" their arrival upon a sheet. For while Macy's is known as the department-store without a time-clock, there is none which is more punctilious about keeping an exact record of the comings and goings of its workers, from the lowest to the highest. In the entire permanent organization of more than five thousand folk, there are not more than ten or a dozen who are exempted from this necessity. A man may draw a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year salary at Macy's and still be compelled to sign his time. It is part of the inherent democracy of the organization which holds as a high principle that what is fair for one man is fair for another. A better bed-rock principle can hardly be imagined. Half after eight! A bell rings somewhere. The time-lists of the minor executives--perhaps it is better to remember them as the specials--are closed, and new ones substituted. These are duplicates of the earlier ones. When the section manager (a modern and much better name for the "floor-walker" of the earlier days) signs one of these, he does not merely put down an "X" as before eight-thirty, but specifically writes down his arriving time. But from eight-thirty to eight-forty-five is known to the rank and file of the organization as its hour for arrival. Three doors--one in Thirty-fourth Street (for the women, as well as for men executives) and two others, in Thirty-fifth Street (for the other men workers and the junior girls respectively) open on the precise moment of the half-hour. Even before they swing backward upon their hinges the earliest risers of the Macy family are beginning to group themselves in front of them. They go tramping up the broad stairs together; dropping into the slender receptacles the individual brass checks (of which much more a little later) at the first barrier-gateway; after which they go scurrying off to the locker-rooms, before descending or ascending to their various posts in the store. For fifteen minutes this rank and file--a miniature army it is--comes trooping in. There is no time to be lost; and yet no unseemly haste or confusion. And no noise. Noise, particularly surplus noise, is quite unnecessary in a machine which is functioning well.