The Fort Dodge Messenger: Dec. 12, 1906

Fort Dodge’s Live Ones: A.D. McQuilkin

As the owner of “The Big Store with little prices,” A.D. McQuilkin is most familiarly known, but there are other names that might serve to designate him. One is the word “Hustler.” Another is  his title of President of the Iowa Retail Furniture Dealers’ Association, which place he has filled with credit since a year ago last June. No one deserves a place among Fort Dodge’s live ones better than Mr. McQuilkin. Where questions of the city’s progress are brought up he is always found in the front rank and willing to carry the banner.

Of course, if the city’s wagon were the real thing, not figurative, Mr. McQuilkin’s shoulder at the wheel would not cause it to fly, for he doesn’t measure up well with the ringside stalwarts. But when it comes to a matter of push, as those who understand know the word, he is right on the firing line with the fellows who are making the wheels of Fort Dodge progress hum. And in this line his efforts are such that when the bunch gets out to boost his place is always reserved for him.

Not satisfied with seeing Fort Dodge grow away from him, Mr. McQuilkin has instead decided to do a little of the leading himself, and just to show what real enterprise is like  he now decides to build and start next door to his present big furniture store another one equally large which will give him the room that he needs to expand his business along progressive ideas. The two will be connected with an overhead passageway.

The friend suggested the other way that when the two stores were running Mr. McQuilkin might have some trouble in adapting his business byword, “The Big Store with little prices,” to the change, “for,” said the friend, “to have it read ‘The two big stores with the too little prices’ wouldn’t sound right” Mr. McQuilkin responded to the jest by saying it “guessed he would have to call it The bigger store with the littler prices.”

Tags: 1906, McQuilkin