No one better personified the vitality of the American Dream in the second half of the 20th century than Sam Walton. A scrappy, sharp-eyed bantam rooster of a boy, Walton grew up in the Depression dust bowl of Oklahoma and Missouri, where he showed early signs of powerful ambition: Eagle Scout at an improbably young age and quarterback of the Missouri state-champion high school football team. He earned money to help his struggling family by throwing newspapers and selling milk from the cow. After graduating from the University of Missouri, he served in the Army during World War II. Then, like millions of others, he returned home in 1945 to earn a living and raise a family in an uncertain peacetime economy. Over the decades that followed, the way America worked and lived changed profoundly, and Walton found himself at the center of much of that change. He possessed a gift for anticipating where things were headed, and he probably understood the implications of the social and demographic currents that were sweeping the country–especially outside its cities–better than anyone else in business. That acumen hastened his rise from humble proprietor of a variety store in the little Delta cotton town of Newport, Ark., to largest retailer in the world and richest man in America. When Walton died in 1992, with a family net worth approaching $25 billion, he left behind a broad and important legacy in American business as well as a corporate monument. Wal-Mart stores is the No. 4 company in the FORTUNE 500, with annual sales of close to $120 billion, ranking behind only General Motors, Ford and Exxon. At the risk of oversimplifying a rather complex business phenomenon, it can be said that the easiest way to grasp the essence of what Sam Walton meant to America is to read his ad slogan emblazoned on all those Wal-Mart trucks you see barreling down highways around the country: WE SELL FOR LESS, ALWAYS. Walton did not invent discount retailing, just as Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile. But just as Ford and his cars revolutionized America and its industrial model, Walton’s extraordinary pursuit of discounting revolutionized the country and its service economy. Walton didn’t merely alter the way much of America shopped; he changed the philosophy of much of American business, instigating the shift of power from manufacturer to consumer that has become prevalent in industry after industry. Though it’s hard to believe today, discount retailing was a controversial concept when it began to gain ground in the ’50s at stores such as Ann & Hope, which opened in a reclaimed mill in Cumberland, R.I. Traditional retailers hated it, and so did manufacturers; it threatened their control of the marketplace. Most states had restrictions on the practice. When the business began to emerge in the early ’60s, Walton was a fairly rich merchant in his 40s, operating some 15 variety stores spread mostly around Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. They were traditional small-town stores with relatively high price markups.
