Arctic Chainster

In Seattle last week, having traveled southward 2,000 miles by plane, another 1,000 miles by ship, was Boris Magids, a stocky, bright-eyed little Jew who is "farthest north" in the chain-store business. His half dozen stores are spotted along 1,000 miles of the Arctic Ocean on Alaska's Kotzebue Sound in Eskimo villages with such sub-zero names as Deering, Keewalik, Shishmaref, Kobuk. Gross libel was the press report that his Seattle visit was the first time he had been "outside" in 27 years. Rated one of the Arctic's shrewdest judges of raw furs and hard liquor, Boris Magids journeys to Seattle each year to replenish his chain's stocks.

Trader Magids has been driving an honest Arctic bargain for 20 years. It has to be honest, he explains, because Eskimos are not concerned with how far they go for their shopping. A small slip is likely to drive away a customer who came 400 miles by dog team, make him go 500 miles the next time to trade with someone else. No cash register affair, honesty in the Magids chain is a complicated matter involving as much as 15 years of credit. The Eskimos and, in Candle, the white residents bring in furs, gold, seal oil and reindeer meat to trade for canned food, clothes, hardware, needles, anchors, liquor. As near as he can figure, Trader Magids last year did $90,000 worth of business. Another $15,000 was taken in by Kotzebue Sound Lighterage Co., which he also owns.

Trader Magids, who said last week in his Seattle hotel room that he had been "born and reared in little old New York City," was actually born 46 years ago in Vilno, Russia. At 18 he sailed from Hamburg for Candle, Alaska, to join his brother Sam, who was working in a chain of trading posts owned by Herbert Greenberg. In 1915 the brothers bought posts at Kiana and Kotzebue, started a chain of their own. Brother Boris enlisted in the U. S. Army in Wartime, thereby gained U. S. citizenship. After the War the Magids abandoned their post at Kiana and founded others along the coast. Sam Magids died in 1929, and his widow, known as Queen Bess in Nome, later joined Boris in the business.

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