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Lincoln Filene was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 5, 1865, the son of William and Clara (Ballin) Filene. In 1901, when their father died, Lincoln and his brother Edward inherited his piece-goods and women' s clothing store that they had been managing for a decade. Together with Louis Kirstein, who joined them in 1911, they built William Filene's Sons Company into a large department store with a number of branches in other New England locations. Although the famous Automatic Bargain Basement was Edward Filene' s idea in 1909, Lincoln Filene originated or implemented a number of significant innovations, including cycle billing, the first company charge card, the formation of a company union, the establishment of a credit union for employees, and the development of a close, supportive relationship between management and workers. At one time, Filene's had a fully-staffed twenty-five-bed infirmary across the street from the Boston store and an employee-elected arbitration board which settled disputes between management and employees.
On September 6, 1916, at a luncheon meeting that he had arranged for the owners of eighteen department stores, Lincoln Filene suggested a cooperative arrangement between them to increase their efficiency and profitability. The result, two months later, was the Retail Research Association in New York City, followed in 1918 by the creation of the Associated Merchandising Corporation (which provided mass-purchasing benefits for member stores) and the formation of Federated Department Stores in 1929. Filene's, F. and R. Lazarus of Columbus, Ohio, and Abraham & Straus of Brooklyn were the first three stores to exchange their stock for Federated stock. Lincoln Filene served as Federated's first Chairman of the Board.
He worked for codes of fair business dealings and aided in bringing about state systems of unemployment insurance, was a founder of the American Arbitration Association, and through the International Chamber of Commerce, of which he was an active member, helped to eliminate a number of unfair business practices abroad and to establish an international arbitration commission. In 1925, he was chairman of the National Trade Relations Committee of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. He was the author of "A Merchant's Horizon" (1924), "Unfair Trade Practices--How to Remove Them" (1934), and (with others) "Toward Full Employment" (1938). He also wrote a number of magazine articles on social and economic subjects.
Having established the Lincoln and Therese Filene Foundation for charitable and educational purposes in 1937, he was honored when that foundation and Federated Department Stores gave $300,000 to endow the Lincoln Filene Professorship of Retailing at Harvard in 1949. The Foundation gave Bates College an auditorium in 1954, and in 1955 endowed the Lincoln Filene Professorship in Civic Education at Tufts University and helped finance WGBH-TV, Boston's first educational television station.
Lincoln Filene married Therese Weil on May 16, 1895, in Boston. She was an early advocate of women's suffrage. She was also involved in a number of philanthropic activities throughout her life. She aided many immigrant families in the Boston area and organized relief efforts after the widely-destructive Chelsea fire. She founded the Boston Music School Settlement and worked there for many years, and she was a long-time and generous supporter of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Lincoln and Therese Filene had two daughters: Catherine, who married (1) Alvin Dodd and (2) Jouett Shouse, and Helen, who married George E. Ladd, Jr. Catherine Shouse's achievements ranged from being the first woman appointed to the Democratic National Committee and developing a job training and rehabilitation program at the first Federal Prison for Women to serving on the boards of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her most notable achievements were the founding and leadership of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts on the site of what had been her farm in Vienna, Virginia. Helen Ladd' s efforts were largely responsible for the construction of the Therese W. Filene Music Building at Skidmore College and the endowment of sixteen four-year music scholarships at the same school.
Lincoln Filene died at his Cape Cod home in Marston's Mills on August 27, 1957.
