2 Annals of Wyoming^l^^Voming History Journal Spring 2014
The Most Interesting Trip I
Have Ever Taken Among the
I
Stores."
James Cash Penney's Return
to
Wyoming in the Great
|
Depression
by
David Delbert Kruger
W
hile the genesis of J.C. Penney stores in Wyoming is well known and documented, far less attention has been paid to James Cash Penney's return visits after his company became a national department store chain. The Wyoming aspects of Penney's life seemingly dissipated in 1909, when he moved his family and business headquarters from Kemmerer to Salt Lake City before permanently relocating to New York City in 1914. To say that Penney merely "moved on after leaving Wyoming is an understatement. Within twenty years, he had amassed a fortune of $40 million, overseeing fourteen hundred department stores bearing his name across the United States. Yet, when the crisis of the Great Depression nearly destroyed him, Penney found solace by personally returning to where his company began, visiting employees, customers, and local residents. In the fall of 1933, after presiding over the grand opening for a massive new store in downtown San Francisco, Penney came to Wyoming entirely by himself, quite frugally and without the airs and entourage that might have befitted a national business icon of his stature. His travel notes from this return to Wyoming reveal not only detailed observations about early J.C. Penney stores throughout the state, but how the trip itself therapeutically grounded him as he personally recovered from the Great Depression.Despite his birth and formative years in Missouri, Penney s transplanted roots in Wyoming actually began in 1899 when, at the age of twenty-four, he accepted employment as a stock clerk at the Golden Rule department store in downtown Evanston. Wyoming rapidly served as the location for many of his rites of passage into adulthood. His marriage to fellow Golden Rule
Personal portrait of Penney in 1929 at the age of 54, as he would have appeared just prior to his struggles during the Great Depression. Courtesy of DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
Annals of Wyoming: I he Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 3
clerk Berta Hess occurred in Cheyenne the following year, at the First Baptist Church during Frontier Days. Penney's first two children, Roswell and J. C., Jr., were also born in Wyoming in 1901 and 1903, respectively.1 Even as his business activities in Wyoming began to take him to Denver, Chicago, and New York City, Penney continued operating out of Kemmerer for seven years. By 1909, he had six stores with plans for nearly twenty more across eight states; Penney quickly realized he could no longer effectively oversee his growing chain if he remained in Wyoming. Despite his preference for living in small, rural communities, the demands of his rapidly growing business forced him to move his family to Salt Lake City. Five years later, he had almost one hundred stores and was forced to move again in 1914, permanently to New York City. Although Penney remained a New York resident for the rest of his life, he continued to regularly travel throughout the United States, visiting existing J.C. Penney stores on trips to and from his home town of Hamilton, Missouri, as well as scouting future store locations as the chain exponentially grew. In 1917, he turned over daily leadership of the company to his former Kemmerer clerk and Cumberland manager Earl Corder Sams, but continued leading the J.C. Penney Company as Chairman of the Board. In naming Sams company president, however, Penney had not retired or even stepped aside to a superficial role, but merely shifted his energies to continue personally visiting J. C. Penney stores and customers while additionally engaging in massive philanthropic and agricultural projects around the United States.
Throughout the incredible boom of his company in the 1920s, when his chain expanded from 312 stores to nearly fourteen hundred stores across every state, Penney had not forgotten about Wyoming personally or professionally. He refused to sell his
house in Kemmerer, maintained his subscription to the Kemmerer newspaper, and contributed funds for constructing a new civic building in Kemmerer as a memorial to his first wife, Berta, who had passed away from pneumonia one year after they left the town.2 Penney's company also continued opening additional Wyoming locations, with nineteen new department stores on Main streets throughout the state. By the end of the 1920s, at the age of fifty-four, Penney had amassed a fortune worth $40 million, owning elegant estates near New York City and Miami, more than one hundred twenty thousand acres of farmland near Jacksonville, Florida, as well as a number of working farms near his home town in Missouri. Although Penney had prematurely lost his first two wives to illness, his personal life also remained equally vibrant, with a new wife twenty years his junior and two baby daughters almost thirty years younger than his eldest son, Roswell.3
While the J.C. Penney Company had been incorporated since 1913, Penney maintained the chain as a private corporation for the first twenty-seven years of its existence. In October 1929, a year in which the J.C. Penney Company planned to open a record five hundred new stores nationwide, Penney and his partners secured a listing via the New York Stock Exchange, preparing for even greater prosperity in the 1930s. Within one week, Penney went from celebrating this moment to witnessing the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. The depth of the negative impact was not immediate, as the company continued to open new stores throughout 1930, including locations in Cody, Gillette, and Wheatland. Unfortunately, while the majority of Penney's partners and store managers were surviving the Depression, the company founder was facing the implosion of his entire fortune, largely as a consequence of his golden-rule generosity.
1 Penney and Allied Families (James Cash Penney family history book), box 2, A2004.0006, J. C. Penney Papers, DeGolyer Library, Southern
Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, hereafter cited as JCPP, DeGolyer Library. Penney's first son Roswell Kemper Penney (1901-1971) was born in Evanston while Penney was still a sales clerk, while his second son Johnson Callahan Penney "J. C., Jr.' (1903-1938) was born in Kemmerer after Penney opened his first store.
2 Kemmerer Camera, May 29, 1925; Kemmerer Gazette, August 4, 1949; "Salesman Penney Sells Again," Life Magazine May (1951): 52. It
is worth noting that in 1949, when the Kemmerer American Legion Post acquired a liquor license to sell alcohol in the civic hall Penney had dedicated to his late wife twenty-five years before, the non-drinking Penney immediately found out and ordered Berta Penneys name removed from the building. Even so, Penney continued to honor Berta Penney's memory within Kemmerer, eventually funding and personally dedicating a new local Methodist Church in her name, an event covered by Life magazine in their May 1951 issue.
4 Annals of Wyoming: Ihe Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014
Penney had never taken a salary from his company since leaving Kemmerer in 1909, living instead off his shares of store profits and stock dividends that had only gone upward until the stock market crash. In expanding his personal philanthropic activities and massive agricultural projects such as Penney Farms in Florida, Penney had risked his entire shares of J.C. Penney stock as collateral for their loans. While Penney did maintain a personal savings in a Florida bank he had acquired, a run on the bank in late 1930 caused it to fail, and with its failure and the declining value of J.C. Penney stock, the outstanding loans on Penney's philanthropic projects were called. By the latter half of 1931, Penney had not only lost his entire savings, but nearly every stock share of the company he had personally created. While Penney was accepting the inevitable reality of being completely broke, depositors at his Florida bank additionally bombarded him with a million dollar lawsuit, holding him personally liable for the bank's collapse.4
As he silently dealt with the implosion of his personal finances, Penney increasingly found life in New York to be unbearable, at work and at home. His wife Caroline believed his personal depression was creating an unhealthy environment for their two young daughters, and quickly sent them away to live with her sister in Arizona."1 Concurrently, Penney began to realize that the only therapeutic escape from his own depression was visiting J. C. Penney stores, employees, and customers throughout the country. As a welcome distraction from his personal problems, he decided to pursue such trips with even greater zeal. In early 1931, Penney informed company executives of his plans for an extensive solo trip to visit J.C. Penney stores throughout the Midwest, along with local customers in the communities they served. Ostensibly, his objective was to personally raise store morale and try to understand the problems of the Great Depression, with the byproduct of improving
his own morale in the process.6
As a matter of frugality, Penney felt it was a waste of company expenses and time to bring anyone with him during these extensive travels. He frugally journeyed alone, riding trains from town to town and when necessary, hitching rides with store managers in their cars. In the early 1930s, even with nearly fifteen hundred J.C. Penney stores spanning the United States, Penney still made it a point to know and remember every manager in his chain, frequently accepting offers to stay as a guest in their homes and enjoying the meals their wives happily prepared for him. Eight decades stood between his travels and the arrival of postmodern devices like smartphones and iPads, but James Cash Penney's brain functioned as its own high speed computer, rapidly storing and accessing a cerebral database of managers, stores, and local economic factors with virtually unlimited memory.7 Whenever he stopped at a J. C. Penney store, Penney would spend considerable time and energy visiting with his employees and customers, evaluating store operations in great detail while contextually assessing the agricultural, industrial, and economic problems that pervaded each community. Penney hoped his personal interactions at each store would improve the morale of not just local employees, but rural residents who at that time largely made up his customer base, particularly farmers and ranchers with whom he had long identified. However, even with goodwill involved, he concurrently accepted that these journeys were business trips, with the ultimate goal of improving sales and profits at J.C. Penney stores. Throughout his travels, he formally transcribed his perceptions of each locale's problems and potential solutions, essentially drafting a field report for later use by J. C. Penney executives back in New York City.8
Penney's 1931 journey throughout the Midwest also touched communities in Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, and certainly raised morale of 4 Mary Elizabeth Curry, Creating an American Institution: The Merchandising Genius of J. C. Penney (New York: Garland, 1993), pp- 267-71.
Dr. Mary Frances Wagley, interview by author, August 18, 2010, Cockeysville, Maryland. Wagley is the eldest daughter and last surviving child of James Cash Penney.
James Cash Penney, Report: Covering Visits to Certain J. C. Penney Company Stores in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, _ Nebraska, and Iowa, April 26 to May 15, 1931, JCPP, DeGolyer Library.
For numerous personal stories involving Penney's exceptional memory, see "J. C. Penney Has Keen Memory for Name, Face," Shenandoah ^ Evening Sentinel (Shenandoah, Iowa), April 28, 1969, p. 7.
local store managers, employees, and residents in the small Western towns he visited. However, Penneys mounting financial problems negated any personal benefit he received from the trip, and he could not prevent sliding even further into his own psychological abyss. By the latter half of 1931, he had come to regard himself as a complete failure, and even began contemplating the possibility of suicide. Although his Christian beliefs ultimately deterred him from taking his own life, his physical health was visibly suffering from what he later admitted to being a complete nervous breakdown. Even with his will to live, Penney felt the medical fallout from his intense anxiety and depression would inevitably kill him by the end of the year. In December 1931, Penney wrote out "parting letters" to his wife Caroline and their two young daughters, convinced that the night he was writing them would be his last.'' It took a profound and chance religious experience at the Kellogg Sanitarium in Michigan to finally give him the spiritual healing to move forward with his life while facing the inevitable collapse of his finances."1
Earl Corder Sams, Penney's personal choice to succeed him as J.C. Penney Company president since 1917, had worked for the company since 1907, when Penney hired him as a clerk in his Kemmerer store
before sending
him off to manage
the Cumberland
location the
following year. Even as the company founder privately languished in the early 1930s, the company he created was in decent financial health,
Annals of Wyoming: Ihc Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 5
San Francisco J.C Penney store-Massive new metropolitan location personally opened by Penney before beginning his trip back to Wyoming. In 1933. James Cash Penney agreed to personally preside over the grand opening of this new store as a public relations event for the J.C. Penney Company, but only on the condition he also be allowed to revisit his early Wyoming locations on the the way back to New York City. An early example of Penney's massive "metropolitan" stores that successsfully opened in large cities throughout the 1930s, locations like downtown San Francisco were the brainchild of Penney's former Kemmerer clerk and Cumberland manager Earl Corder Sams (photo on left), who served as J.C. Penney Company President from 1917-1950. Throughout the grand opening festivities in San Franciso. Penney noted that he couldn't stop thinking about the Kemmerer store in comparison and contrast. The company founder himself was almost overwhelmed by the sheer size of the metropolitan location and its crowd of shoppers, noting that sales figures for the opening day almost exceeded those for the entire first year in Kemmerer. Courtesy of De Golyer Library, Southern Methodist University
9 Dr. Mary Frances Wagley, interview by author, August 18, 2010.
6 Annals of Wyoming: I he Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014
and Sams was advancing Penney's merchandising ideas to guide J.C. Penney from traditional small town locations into gigantic department stores in the business districts of major American cities. The first of these "metropolitan" J.C. Penney stores opened in downtown Seattle, Washington, followed by additional metropolitan prototypes in downtown Portland, Oregon; Omaha, Nebraska; and Des Moines, Iowa. By 1933, Sams was preparing to open a metropolitan store in downtown San Francisco, and he suggested that Penney personally unveil the new location as a public relations event. Penney agreed to the request, but only on the condition that he also travel back from San Francisco to visit the smaller J.C. Penney stores where the chain had begun, notably ending his trip in Wyoming before returning to New York City by Thanksgiving.11
In October 1933, James Cash Penney presided over the grand opening for the new J.C. Penney store in downtown San Francisco, though his travel notes indicated he had already been anticipating what was to follow:
This has been, I think, the most interesting trip I have ever taken among the stores. To begin with, no experience has equaled the opening days at San Francisco. Crowded as every moment of my time was, my mind instinctively reverted very often those first days to the little Kemmerer store; the contrast between the new and the old was too great not to assert itself; and when we learned the amount of the first day's sales it was impressive to recall that the volume approximated the sales for the entire first year at Kemmerer.12
After spending a week in San Francisco, where he fulfilled a variety of speaking engagements on behalf of the company, Penney began his journey back to Wyoming. He arrived in Reno on November 1, 1933, and spent the next two weeks visiting stores
in northern Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Newspaper articles indicated Penney's presence was quite welcome, even during the era of anti-chain store sentiment in the rest of the country. Penney was also pleased with the positive reception competing businessmen had given him, the sole exception being Columbus Charles "C. C." Anderson, a former friend and business acquaintance from his early Golden Rule days in Kemmerer. Anderson had, like Penney, begun his career as a Golden Rule merchant, even combining New York merchandise shipments with Penney to collectively reduce freight costs to their Wyoming and Idaho stores. Although Anderson had successfully built his own eponymous chain throughout the Northwest, he had harshly turned against Penney in 1932 when the J.C. Penney Company opened a store in downtown Boise, Idaho, one block from Anderson's own flagship location. Despite Penney's enjoyment over meeting with many Boise merchants, his notes indicated that Andersons open hostility and loss of friendship had not gone unnoticed. "C. C. Anderson is the main obstacle in our competition," wrote Penney as he was leaving Boise. "He does not recognize our store. Fortunately, however, the other stores are friendly and they are all against Mr. Anderson, who, I am sorry to say, has acted very 'small.'"13
Penney continued visiting J.C. Penney stores throughout Idaho and Montana, in cities as large as Billings and Pocatello and towns as small as St. Anthony and Stevensville. On November 17, he finally entered Wyoming, passing by his locations in downtown Sheridan and Buffalo before settling in Casper for the next two days. Inside the J.C. Penney store on east Second Street, Penney held a "store meeting" for employees throughout the area, personally giving a motivational pep rally in which he encouraged managers and sales associates to remain enthusiastic and confident in serving their customers during difficult economic times. He also spent considerable time waiting on customers David Delbert Kruger. Earl Corder Sams and the Rise of J.C. Penney," Kansas History 35 (Fall 2012): 164-85; James Cash Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited.• October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library. Earl Corder Sams (1884-1950) was also responsible tor opening many ot the J.C. lenney locations in the eastern half of Wyoming and played a crucial role in helping the much younger J. W. Maniott, Sr. expand his business operations in the 1940s. Sams spent nearly 43 years of his life working for Penney's firm until his death in ; Penney. Impressions of Stores Visited: October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library.
Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited: October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library. There is no evidence Penney and C. C. Anderson ever restored their friendship. Andersons chain of stores in Washington and Idaho would later be acquired by Allied Stores and converted into Bon Marche outlets before ultimately being rebranded as Macy's locations in 2006. In 2010, Macys permanently shut down Andersons flagship location in downtown Boise.
Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 7
Casper J.C. Penney Store--J.C. Penney spent two days of his 1933 trip in Casper, visiting store associates, waiting on customers, and giving speeches to local groups and radio stations. This early Casper store now serves as the primary location for Lou Taubert Ranch Outfitters, but its other claim to fame during the Great Depression was providing a lap blanket for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during his 1937 parade through the city. In 1943, the store would move to a new downtown building on the corner of East Second and Wolcott-James Cash Penney's 1962 visit to that location marked the last time he would ever return to Wyoming. Courtesy of De Golyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
"Double Room" J. C. Penney Store - Identical location to Penney's former store in Edgerton, Wyoming, which he personally visited on his 1933 trip. Unfortunately, there is no photo of the store in Edgerton, which served the tiny town (and Midwest) from 1929-1934 and was personally visited by Penney in 1933. However, Penney's description of the store in his travel log places it nearly identical to the Rugby, North Dakota, store (in photo above) The double-room configuration made it twice as wide as Penney's early single double-room stores, meaning the Edgerton storefront was nearly as wide as current locations in downtown Sheridan and Kemmerer. By Penney's 1933 trip, the Edgerton J.C. Penney had become a problem store for Penney and his company, and despite Penney's desire to save it, was permanently closed the year after Penney's visit. Courtesy of De Golyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
himself, visiting with local residents from Natrona County as they shopped on the sales floor. Outside of the Casper store, he accepted an invitation from radio station KDFN to give a talk on dealing with the problems of the Great Depression. Penney then met with the Casper Commercial Club the following day, where he delivered another formal speech called
"Our Changing Economic Conditions. '4
Although Penney had planned to spend the next evening in Cheyenne, the J.C. Penney store in Edgerton became his impromptu destination as soon as he left: Casper. From todays perspective, it seems unusual that J.C. Penney ever operated a modern department store in such a remote Wyoming community, much less that James Cash Penney felt it personally necessary to travel one hundred miles out of his way to inspect the store himself. Penney had observed from reports in Casper that sales at the Edgerton store had markedly slipped, and he wanted
to see the operations firsthand before passing any judgment. When he arrived on the adjacent outskirts of Midwest and Edgerton, he was immediately taken back to memories of Cumberland, the Wyoming mining town near Kemmerer where he had opened the third store in his chain thirty years before. " Ifte Midwest Oil Company, of Midwest (Standard Oil) have things all their own way, Penney remarked in his notes, "as did the Union Pacific Coal Company in Cumberland. Edgerton is a typical western camp, fifty miles from Casper." Penney was quite familiar with the power and influence of "company towns" on behalf of their own stores in Wyoming; the Union Pacific Coal Company had forced him to locate his Cumberland Golden Rule store one mile from the city center in 1903, and in 1929 Midwest Oil forced the J.C. Penney Company to open their store entirely outside of Midwest, in nearby Edgerton. Walking by himself on Edgerton's Main Street, Penney made his
14 Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited: October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library. Casper Times, November 11, 1933; Casper Tribune Herald, November 12, 16, and 17, 1933.
8 Annals of Wyoming: the Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014
way inside the department store that prominently bore his name, thoroughly inspecting the layout and its merchandise. The size of the store belied the town's population, as the Edgerton J.C. Penney was considerably larger than his stores in Greybull, Lovell, and Thermopolis, and with its "double room" storefront, nearly as wide as his locations in downtown Sheridan and Newcastle. However, unlike Penney's previous stop in Casper, his activities inside the Edgerton store quietly occurred without any public fanfare. As evidenced by the comments in his travel log, Penney's pressing analysis of the store, its employees, and the economic potential from the nearby refinery in Midwest outweighed any need for public relations activities. "Our store is the only one in the town, though of course there is a big commissary in Midwest," he noted. "The fixtures are the crudest of the crude, but even so the store could be made to present a better appearance than it does. There are no old goods - but the stock is miserably kept." Ultimately, Penney determined the root of the problem in Edgerton to be his store manager, a bachelor named E. R. Cooper. "Cooper is sick, Penney diagnosed, "physically and mentally. He is single and 'batches,' living in the rear of the store. He runs the store with the help of one green boy, one regular girl and one extra girl. A change of management is imperative. Cooper is misplaced and will never do any good in Edgerton either for himself or for us." Penney, however, had faith that a J.C. Penney department store could still succeed in Edgerton, and as he departed for Cheyenne, proposed a solution for company executives to follow:
What is needed is a young couple who can live in the rear (the three rooms can be made very attractive), the wife to assist in the store. The volume will be about $45,000 this year, and if the store were run properly it would show a
profit. It has done as high as $80,000, and in normal times can do it again. The Standard Oil [refinery] is running at 25% capacity.15
The next day, Penney arrived in downtown Cheyenne and hosted another motivational meeting inside the J.C. Penney store on West 17th Street. In advance of his arrival, he had invited managers and employees from J.C. Penney stores in Laramie and Torrington to join their counterparts in the Capitol city, where he enthusiastically addressed them in the center of the sales floor before unlocking the front doors and greeting customers as they entered. Penney remained in the store throughout the entire day, personally waiting on customers in the capacity of a sales clerk. "I'd rather do this than eat," he cheerfully explained to a local reporter covering his visit.16 He was particularly impressed by the Cheyenne store and its manager, Fred Hultquist, whom he had known for several years. "This store is in a class by itself," noted Penney in his journal. "It is well located and has remarkable customer appeal." Penney's short time away from the store involved meeting with the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce for an informal lunch. As he visited with local businessmen, he also remained keenly aware of national competitors entering Cheyenne s department store scene, just as he had been aware of their recent incursion into Casper. Although Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck had operated without any physical department stores until the mid-1920s, both had recently augmented their mail order business by rapidly opening department store locations nationwide. Montgomery Ward had been particularly aggressive in Wyoming, opening Casper and Cheyenne locations down the street from Penney's. Just four years earlier, in 1929, Montgomery Ward and Sears had even approached Penney separately with offers to merge his company
Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited: October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library; J.C. Penney Store Opening/Closing Lists, box 229, A2004.0007J.C. Penney Company Records, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, hereafter cited as JCPCR, DeGolyer Library.
James Cash Penney quoted in "Chain Store Head Waits on Customers in Cheyenne," Wyoming State Tribune-Cheyenne State Leader, November
Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 9 - — --- - - ii ir A
-FOUNDER S DAY
rim a I l*i>iun>y\s
"Founder's Day" at the Cheyenne J. C. Penney in 1933 - (left) Cheyenne J.C. Penney store advertised low prices and a visit from Penney himself, (right) Competing advertisement from Montgomery Ward store in the same paper. Although Penney spent the entire day greeting customers in his Cheyenne store, he was also aware of national department store competitors like Montgomery Ward entering the Cheyenne market. While Ward's sold broader lines of merchandise and offered catalog sales, Penney still felt the strengths of his manager Fred Hultquist made his Cheyenne store superior to any competitor. Images taken from Wyoming State Tribune-Cheyenne State Leader, November 1933.WARD'S NOVEMBER VALUES-THREE BIG DAYS
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with theirs, since the J.C. Penney chain had already established department store locations across every state and lacked its own catalog operations. Although either merger would have greatly added to Penney's fortune, he and company president Earl Sams ultimately turned down both offers, as they felt any benefit of the merger to their customers would be negligible.17 Nevertheless, Penney personally remained confident about the superiority of his own store in Cheyenne, largely on the strength of Hultquist and his store personnel. "We have the lead over other stores in town, he concluded as he left the Capitol city. "Montgomery Ward have a good-sized store and are doing quite a little business in our lines. As in most places they are unable to find competent men to run their stores; consequently they have a big
turnover in personnel. They have had, on an average, a new manager every six months since opening up in Cheyenne."18
As Penney made his way west to Rock Springs, he no doubt became increasingly nostalgic about his early experiences there at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first three Golden Rule stores in his chain were all located in southwest Wyoming, and from 1903-1909, he had travelled incessantly among them as his business began to grow. While the Cumberland J.C. Penney store had relocated to Cokeville when the Union Pacific Coal Company abandoned their adjacent mines, Penney's other two locations in Rock Springs and Kemmerer had evolved into busy J.C. Penney stores in newer, larger buildings downtown. Interestingly enough, Penney's first visit
17 Norman Beasley, Main Street Merchant: The Story ofthe J. C. Penney Company (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948), pp. 135-36. Hie J. C. Penney chain would not get into the catalog business until 1963.
18 Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited: October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library, Wyoming State Tribune-Cheyenne State Leader, November 18 and 26, 1933. For additional reading on Penneys relationship with Hultquist, see "How Mr. Hultquist met Penney," Wyoming State Tribune, January 29, 1978.
10 Annals ofWyoming: The Wyoming History Journal Spring2014
|
Cheyenne J. C. Penney store - Early downtown location Penney visited during 1933 trip. Penney had known Cheyenne J.C. Penney store manager Fred C. Hultquist before his company had acquired the store from his mentor Guy Johnson's Golden Rule chain in 1928. When he returned to Cheyenne in 1933, he was completely enamored by Hultquist's management of the store and its "customer appeal." Although Penney dined with the local Chamber of Commerce, he also spent considerable time waiting on customers inside the store, excitedly remarking to a Cheyenne reporter, "I'd rather do this than eat!". Courtesy of De Golyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
to the Rock Springs store in 1903 had actually been contentious, as he was forced to immediately fire the manager for closing the store during prime business hours to play musical gigs around the town. "It was nothing against him as a man," Penney humorously reflected years later, "but a good deal against him as a merchant.'19 In 1907, Rock Springs became the first store Penney would completely own after Kemmerer when he bought out Tom Callahan and Guy Johnson, his two older mentors and early partners. Ironically, as soon as Penney had owned the Rock Springs store outright, he immediately sold it to Will Partin, his cousin who had wanted to run his own Golden Rule location. Penney then used the money from that sale to begin expanding his chain outside ofWyoming, initially into Idaho and Utah. Twenty years later, after his chain had grown to more than one thousand locations, he bought the Rock Springs store back again, converting it to a
J.C. Penney location in 1928 before reopening it in a new building on Front Street.20 The new location showcased the standard J.C. Penney interior layout of a high-ceiling sales floor with balconies towering over the front and rear of the store, large display windows along the storefront and the yellow and black exterior signage that is still in use on current J.C. Penney locations in downtown Kemmerer and Sheridan. In addition to the newer location, Rock Springs manager P. W. Memovich had clearly created a J.C. Penney store that pleased the company founder in every way. "It was a perfect delight to see this store," Penney beamed after walking around the sales floor. "Overstocked and crowded, but extremely clean and well kept — one of the best jobs of stock keeping I have seen on any of my trips. Memovich is a real merchant and just the man for Rock Springs. Outside of his store, Penney continued analyzing retail competition within Rock Springs itself:
19
James Cash Penney, Fifty Years with the Golden Rule (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950), p. 57; Curry, Creating an American Institution, ,0 P- 97; History for Rock Springs, Wyoming, J. C. Penney Store #951, electronic files, September 2001, JCPCR, DeGolyer Library.
Penneys cousin ill Partin retired from managing the Rock Springs Golden Rule store in 1923 and sold the store to Penney's former mentor Guy Johnson; Penney bought the store back from Johnson after he had acquired Johnsons Golden Rule chain in 1928.
Annals of Wyoming; The Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 II
Our location is good and we have the store of the town. The old Stock Growers [department store], that has dominated the situation for thirty or more years, is fast losing out. This is also true of McDermot's. Stevens Van England have our old location (with two floors) and are doing a nice business. (The Golden Rule Store sign was permitted to remain on the building after we vacated the property). The mines in the vicinity of Rock Springs are working about half time.21 Although Penney held another store meeting for regional associates in Rock Springs, he was well aware that sales in his Green River location had, like those in Edgerton, unreasonably dropped, and that
Green River store in the Hotel Tomahawk Building - Although not on his schedule. Penney felt his Green River store was, like his Edgerton location, a struggling J.C. Penney store that could benefit from his personal guidance. After spending two days at Rock Springs, Penney got off the train at Green River and made an impromptu visit to this location in the Hotel Tomahawk building, meeting with manager E. A. Day and employees as well as waiting on customers. The Green River J. C. Penney store survived the Depression, but permanently closed in the summer of 1959. Courtesy of De Golyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
the store merited an impromptu visit on his way to Evanston and Kemmerer, where he had scheduled his next visits. As soon as the train stopped in Green River, Penney got off and walked over to the J. C. Penney store downtown, which occupied almost half of the Hotel Tomahawk building. Even with his quiet arrival, word quickly spread that Penney was
in downtown Green River, and the Green River Star promptly dispatched a reporter to cover the story. When the reporter entered the J.C. Penney store, he was startled to find the company founder casually waiting on Green River customers. "While here Mr. Penney put himself behind the counters to wait on trade as an ordinary clerk," the Green River Star later proclaimed, in a front page article. "This, he stated, is regarded by many as an unusual procedure, but with him it is regarded as one of the greatest joys of his existence." Penney was also upbeat in his assessment of economic conditions nationwide. "During the last seven months," he told the newspaper, "our stores have shown an increase over the corresponding period of 1932. And, because we have fifteen hundred stores located in all forty-eight states, I believe they are good barometers."22 Penney also spent significant time meeting with store manager E. A. Day about the store's appearance and performance, which he privately regarded as grossly inferior to the Rock Springs location just fifteen miles away:
This store is in every respect in striking contrast to Rock Springs. Conditions at Green River are bad and have no doubt affected the morale of Day and his sales force. The store is crowded, badly overstocked, and looks like a morgue. This is a poor job of stock keeping - very mussy [sic]. Day is trying to get along with the help of two girls who are only ordinary. He is very sincere, but lacks Memovich's aggressiveness. I spoke to him as to working closely with Memovich. I think he is now willing and anxious to take advice, which he needs badly.23
Penney's later arrival in Evanston began with a dinner at the Lion's Club, where he informally addressed their members. As Evanston had marked his first residence in Wyoming three years before he opened his Kemmerer store, he took time to quietly walk around the town and visit the house he shared
21 Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited: October 11 - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library; Rock Springs Rocket, November 18
and 22, 1933.
" Green River Star, November 24,
12 Annals ofWyoming: I he Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014
James Cash Penney's return to Evanston in 1933 -Penney revisits his first Wyoming home and the store in downtown Evanston. As Evanston was the first Wyoming town Penney ever lived in, he regarded his return there as much a homecoming as Kemmerer. One year before his death in 1971, Penney even wrote to an old friend that "the three years I spent in Evanston were the happiest days of
my life." These photos show Penney visiting his personal . Evanston landmarks during his 1933 visit to the town, (left, above) He is in front of the crude Evanston home he shared with his late wife, Berta, and their in an son Roswell, who was born there in 1900. (right, above) Penney standing in front of the Evanston location that truly launched his retail career in 1899, when he was n]®rey
a 24 year-old clerk. The store was originally a Golden Rule location under Penney's mentors Guy Johnson and Thomas Callahan before Penney later boug ou the chain and converted it to a J.C. Penney Company store in 1928. Penney frequently referred to the location as the "Grandmother Store" of his own chain, since its profits and the fundamental lessons it taught him as a young store clerk made his first store in Kemmerer, and ultinmately the J.C. Penney chain itself, possi Golden Rule signage was always removed after these concessions, but Penney may have requested it remain on stores in Evanston and Rock Springs out of r®®P®c
for his mentors and their business philosophy. At the end of his 1933 trip, Penney remarked that his visits to Evanston, Kemmerer, and Rock Springs were re e e days which thrilled me deeply." though he was critical of his Evanston store being "not at all up to date" and "dingey." The store windows in the photo above, rig show the Company's support for the National Recovery Act. Courtesy of De Golyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
with his late wife and first child, then thoroughly enjoyed his personal interactions with longtime friends and customers. Evanston's enthusiastic public reception gave Penney great pleasure in returning to the familiar sights of Uinta County; his only private complaint was with his local J.C. Penney store on Main, which he regretfully noted was "not at all up to date" and "dingey."24
After staying the night in Evanston, Penney spent the final two days of his trip quietly exploring the roots of his retail empire in and around Kemmerer. Just four years earlier, the J.C. Penney "Mother Store" had moved into a new building on the northwest corner of the Kemmerer Triangle, constructed and designed according to company specifications, with wider, high-ceiling sales floors and office and merchandise balconies. Naturally, Penney was quite fond of the newer location his "Mother Store" now occupied, though nostalgic about what commerce in Kemmerer and
Cumberland had been thirty years before:
We have the leading store in Kemmerer. Blythe, Fargo, Hoskins, the big store, which has always done a big volume, and has been headquarters for men's stock, is gradually fading from the picture; therefore we have little competition. The mines surrounding Kemmerer are practically abandoned. Cumberland is gone entirely — every building has been razed." The visible decadence of the mining industries that once breathed life into Penney's first stores did not temper Penney's pleasure at being back in Kemmerer. His myriad activities around the town reflected his sustained affection for area residents. After visiting for hours with old and new customers and having an informal dinner with the Kemmerer Lion's Club, Penney devoted the final day of his Wyoming trip to addressing students at Kemmerer Wyoming Press (Evanston), November 16 and 23, 1933; Robert Hamby, interview by author, August 28, 2013, Laramie, Wyoming. According to Robert Hamby, the store was remodeled after Penney's 1933 visit, but Penney was similarly disappointed when he visited the Evanston store again in 1060; his recommendations to the company headquarters led to yet another remodeled Evanston storefront and interior that would ,5 ',lst unt'' (^e stores permanent closure in 1992. Robert Hamby, interview by author, August 28, 2013.
* Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited: October II - November 29, 1933, box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library. While Cumberland was not entirely razed b\ Penney s 1 )33 wsit. Penneys Golden Rule store and most of the mining buildings were gone. Penney's Cumberland store u•ls relocated to Cokeville in 1916, but that location was also shut down by the time Penney made his 1933 trip.
Annals of Wyoming: *Ihc Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 13
front entrance. Penney had just turned eighty-five but continued to greet and wait (and Evanston) almost every year after 1933, this 1960 trip would make his final in Kemmerer is still open at this very location - one of about twenty J.C. Penney Southern Methodist University.
James Cash Penney makes his final trip to Kemmerer to reopen his newly remodeled "Mother Store" on the Kemmerer Triangle (1960). The photo on the left shows Penney personally cutting the ribbon for the grand re-opening of the J.C. Penney "Mosther Store" on the Kemmerer Triangle, while the photo on the right shows a balcony level perspective of customers as they flooded the sales floor, with Penney visibly (his white head is just to the left of the open door) shaking hands with each one as they passed through the on customers for several hours. Although Penney made return trips to Kemmerer visit to Kemmerer before his death in 1971. As of this writing, the "Mother Store" stores still operating in a central business district. Courtesy of De Golyer Library,
High School, informally talking with them about his early experiences and how the community in which they all lived had not only given him his first taste of success, but indelibly changed his life.26
On November 24, 1933, Penney left Wyoming to return to New York City and celebrate Thanksgiving with his wife and young daughters. On the long train ride back to where his life, family, and company had long since migrated, he finalized a detailed report about the trip. Included were his analysis of the sugar beet industry in Utah, Idaho, and northern Wyoming, the sheep industry in Montana, potential benefits of the National Recovery Act on area farmers and ranchers, and his early realization among his own store associates that "as a rule, the women far outshine the men."2' Penney also reiterated how incorporating Wyoming into the opening of his massive San Francisco store was ultimately far more rewarding than even he had expected:
After leaving San Francisco and heading for those western states which hold for the older members of our organization such close associations, it was with a keen sense of anticipation, which did not exceed the realization. The days in Evanston, Kemmerer and Rock Springs were red letter days which thrilled me deeply. At many places throughout the West men and women came to me introducing themselves as former residents of one of these towns.28
In New York City, Penney did not draw attention to his psychological and financial woes, largely out of embarrassment, though J.C. Penney executives and store associates inevitably discovered what the company founder had endured. Ultimately, more than a thousand J.C. Penney associates across the chain donated portions of their savings, salaries,
26 Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited- October II - November 29, 1933. box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library; Kemmerer Gazette. November 17,
and 24, 1933.
27 Penney, Impressions of Stores Visited October II - November 29. 1933. box C-2, JCPP, DeGolyer Library. It is worth noting that in 1970,
Wyoming resident Mary Boulette became the first woman ever to become a J. C. Penney store manager. Boulette oversaw J. C. Penney stores in Worland and later Laramie before retiring from the company in 1979. See Casper Star Tribune. July 6, 1970; Laramie Daily Boomerang. August 10, 1979.
14 Annals of Wyoming: lhc Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014
•w. Vi 14. IW2 «
Penney's ongoing ties to Wyoming. Penney continued reading Wyoming newspapers ong after leaving the state, and in 1968, at the age of 93, wrote a personal letter (above, e to the Casper Star Tribune, praising an article the newspaper had written about his eary activities in Wyoming. Penney continued to own his Kemmerer home at its original oca io
(lower left) until his death in 1971. It was placed on the National Register of Historic ace in 1978 and later relocated to its current lot on J. C. Penney Drive as a public historic ex i c In the 1964 photo above, Penney, nearly 90, still vividly connected his modern c ain o i Wyoming origins and golden rule philosophy. He is seen here speaking to empoloyees a the Kemmerer store during the 1964 grand opening for a new J. C. Penney ^catl°n ®
suburban shopping center in Valley Stream, New York. Courtesy of Casper Star- n DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
and stock shares to help him recover. The financial recovery of the J.C. Penney Company was evident one year after Penney returned from Wyoming, when sales nationwide finally began to surpass their 1929 levels. Stock donations and interest-free loans from close friends and family allowed Penney to personally recover many of his stock shares that banks had sold out from under him, which steadily regained and surpassed their earlier values as the J.C. Penney Company firmly established itself as a
prominent department store chain.29
Ironically, as Penney and his Wyoming locations emerged from the Great Depression, sales at the Edgerton J.C. Penney did not improve; Penney and his board reluctantly agreed to close the location for
good in 1934.30 Nevertheless, that same year, Penney happily returned to visit Evanston and Kemmerer again, and would continue to personally incorporate Wyoming into his travel plans virtually every year for the next thirty years of his life.31 In Laramie, the University of Wyoming awarded Penney an Honorary Doctorate in 1945, while Life magazine covered one of his many return trips to Kemmerer in 1951, photographically capturing the normally stoic merchant in emotional moments as he reflected on memories of his first wife Berta and interacted with residents of the tiny town.32 When the Kemmerer store modernized and celebrated a grand reopening in I960, Penney, then eighty five, did not hesitate to come back once again to personally address residents
29
J C. Penney: An American Legacy; A 90* Anniversary History (Piano, Texas: J. C. Penney CO., 1992), p. 16. Joan Anderson (niece of Earl Confer Sams), phone mtemew by author, December 9, 2011, Lakeland, Florida. Earl Corder Sams privately made a considerable personal he created" ^ °" ^ and insisted' aSainst Prey's will, that the company founder draw a salary from the company
30
3, !• C Penne7 Store Opening/Closing Lists, JCPCR, DeGolyer Library
Godfrey M. brbhar Chain Stores in America: 1859-1962 (New York: Chain Store Publishing Corporation, 1963), tables 5, 17; J- C Penney 32 «°rC °Pen,n8/Clos,ng Lists, JCPCR, DeGolyer Library.
Annals of Wyoming: Ihc Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014 15
9:30 A.M. til 12 NOON
SHORT SLEEVE DRESS SHIRTS Quality
CHARGE IT!
rfi i«
T'rrr
The downtown Casper J. C. Penney Store - site of James Cash Penney's final visit to Wyoming in 1962. In 1962, at the age of 87. Penney accepted an invitation to address the Wyoming Council of Retail Merchants at their annual meeting in Casper Although the Council presented Penney with a plaque for his past contributions to the state, shoppers in downtown Casper were quite surprised to find the company founder personally waiting on them the next morning. Despite advertising for a half-day visit, Penney continued to spend the entire day serving Natrona County customers inside the Casper store The Casper Tirbune-Herald ad also shows the store offering credit purchases ("CHARGE IT!"), a company-wide move Penney opposed even after being outvoted by his Board of Directors in 1958 Despite Penney's desire to return to Wyoming again before the end of his life, his 1962 trip to Casper would mark the last time he would ever see the state. Courtesy DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
at Triangle Park before cutting the grand opening ribbon and waiting on customers for several hours.33 Penney made what would be his final Wyoming trip in 1962, addressing the Wyoming Council of Retail Merchants at their annual meeting in Casper. After giving his speech, the council formally honored the eighty-seven year old businessman with a plaque for his many contributions to the state. The following morning, Penney surprised many Natrona County residents by showing up at the J.C. Penney store on Second and Wolcott, where he personally waited on local customers for the entire day. Penney
remained completely accessible to everyone at the downtown Casper location, with the Casper Tribune photographing him as he sold a dress shirt to State Senator David Foote.34
Much to Penney's regret, his busy schedule would prevent him from returning to Wyoming after 1962, though he still maintained great interest in the communities where his business empire had begun. Although Penney's final Wyoming visit was confined to Casper, nearly twenty other Wyoming towns still featured his J.C. Penney department stores on their main streets throughout the state, and would
33
Kemmerer Gazette, September 15 and October 6, 1960.
16 Annals of Wyoming: Ihc Wyoming History Journal Spring 2014
continue to do so well into the latter half of the twentieth century.35 Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, Penney also kept up with articles in the
Kemmerer Gazette and the Casper Star Tribune, and
regularly corresponded with Evanston J.C. Penney manager Robert Hamby, occasionally using Hamby to relay personal messages to local residents.36 In one case, Penney asked Hamby to thank an Evanston banker on his behalf, since the banker had given the Evanston J.C. Penney store a letter Penney had humbly written to the bank more than fifty years earlier, when he was requesting a line of credit to expand his fledgling enterprise. "Will you thank Mr. Bradbury for me?" asked Penney, humorously, adding, "Please say to Mr. Bradbury that I appreciate the fact that my credit is still good at the bank."37 In 1970, when Penney learned that longtime Evanston resident E W. Spaulding had suffered a broken hip, he personally sent Spaulding a lengthy letter wishing him well, vividly reminiscing about their early days as young friends in southwest Wyoming, and confiding that "the three years I spent in Evanston were the happiest days of my life."38 In the final year of his own life, at the age of ninety four, Penney wrote Hamby from the J.C. Penney headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, expressing regret at not being able to visit Evanston and Kemmerer during recent trips to Utah, where he had recently received honors from both Brigham Young University and the Union Pacific Railroad. Still, he optimistically informed the Evanston manager that doctors had given him a clean bill of health, that he believed he could live well past one hundred years, and that he hoped his next trip out West would bring him back to Wyoming one more time.3'' Penney, however, would never make the trip. On February 12, 1971, he suffered a heart attack and quietly passed away in a New York City hospital at the age of ninety-five.40
Despite permanently moving from Wyoming in 1909 and spending the last six decades of his life in New York, James Cash Penney maintained that he could recall not only the names and faces of his early Wyoming customers, but in many cases the sizes of hats, shirts, and shoes they wore.41 During the apogee of his personal success in the 1920s, when the J.C. Penney Company became a nationwide department store chain and made its founder both a multi-millionaire and a household name, Penney had not turned his back on the Equality State. However, returning to Wyoming during the Great Depression was deeply therapeutic and necessary for the national business icon. As James Cash Penney recovered from his own economic devastation, the familiar people and places of Wyoming gave him a peace that would guide him not only through the Great Depression, but the remainder of his long and epic life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank Dr. Mary Frances Wagley, daughter of James Cash Penney; Joan Gosnell, Southern Methodist University Archivist and former J.C.Penney archivist in charge of the J.C.Penney Collection at DeGolyer Library; and retired Wyoming J. C. Penney store managers Mary Boulette and Robert Hamby for their assistance in researching this article.
David Delbert Kruger is an Associate Librarian at the University of Wyoming Libraries. Tie received his MA in English from Kansas State University and his MLS from the University of
Missouri, Columbia. His previous article about Penney, "J.C. Penney: Missouri Man, Wyoming Institution," was published in the Spring 2008 issue of Annals of Wyoming.
35
^ J. C. Penney Store Opening/Closing Lists, JCPCR, DeGolyer Library.
James Cash Penney to Judy Skalla (Casper Star Tribune), January 4, 1968; Robert Hamby, interview by author, August 28, 2013. Whi'e I enney s tailing sight made reading impossible during the last decade of his life, he still delighted in having his mail and newspapers read to him, and would dictate and sign responding letters. His response to a Casper Star Tribune article about him in 1968 not only featured his pra.se, but minute corrections within the article itself. Robert Hamby worked for the J.C. Penney Company for 36 years, and managed the 37 , e"ncy S'°re ln downtown Evanston from 1957 until his retirement in 1976. See Uinta County Herald (Evanston), April 1, 1976. w James Cash Penney to Robert Hamby. August 24, 1961, Robert Hamby personal collection.
39 ]amCS ^ennCy l° F W' SPau'ding, January 11, 1970, Robert Hamby personal collection, an J*mcsTft ney IO Robm Hamb* Ianuary !9. 1970, Robert Hamby personal collection.
41 ffr " 7r7FnbrUaryJ3' 1971; FrancUco Examiner' February 12, 1971; Kemmerer Gazette, February 18, 1971.
the Dynamo TC.Pcnncy Company Newsletter), 5 (April 1921); 10. Penney demonstrated his acute memory of Kemmerer customers even as " ^ grand opening of a new J.C. Penney location in downtown Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Penney immediately recognized p . , , aS "nC '>1 b's earb Kemmerer customers, even though the two men had not seen each other since 1910. See, J.C. 1 enney Meets Fnends, Mount Pleasant News (Iowa), June 10, 1958.
