Fifty Years with the Golden Rule: A Spiritual Autobiography, by J. C. Penney (softcover, 1950, $4, which is 1/3 the internet price.)
James Cash Penney grew up in what he considered an ideal family. His father, a Baptist minister and farmer, taught him ideals he would use to build a department store empire. In 1902 he went to work at a Golden Rule Stores in Wyoming. He did so well he was offered a partnership. His success left him rich, and able to fund many charities. When the Depression came, he tried to save his business and charities by using his personal money, but even so, it was not enough.
Broke and ill, he was admitted to the Battle Creek Sanitarium. This was a personal turning point for him, as he became born again to Christ. He started to speak and preach his belief in Christian values, and that business success was possible if you followed the Golden Rule.
I found his story inspiring, but I am rather surprised by the extreme respect he held for his father. His father, when Penney was only 8 years old and in need of shoes, insisted he earn money to pay for them. Also, when Penney was old enough to learn to farm, his father made him pay for instructions on farming. His father died when Penney was only 20. The family was nearly broke, and Penney had to work to keep the family afloat. These are certainly not behaviors we would admire today in a father.
On the other hand, his father was excommunicated from his church for "holding beliefs contrary to the best interests" of his church. And what were these beliefs? Only the beliefs that preachers should be educated, and that all young people should have the chance to attend Sunday School. In his autobiography Penney writes, critics of Sunday Schools "feared the hoodwinking of children, and attempts to teach doctines of Trinity, and Atonenment. " Amazingly, sometimes Sunday Schools were the only place children could learn to read!
And since when has the doctrine of the Trinity been contoversial? Of course, I doubt it's a doctrine I will ever really understand, but was it really controversial back then? I guess so.
An interesting bit of trivia, not recorded in his autobiogaphy, was his 1940 meeting with a young Sam Walton. Wouldn't you have loved to have seen the man (who had built Penney's) showing the boy (who would later build Walmart) how to wrap packages using as little ribbon as possible!
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table, as of July 5th. (L-bio)
