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Sam Walton

1918–1992 · 74 years Tier I

The son of a Depression foreclosure man who undersold everyone

Portrait of Sam Walton — Photo credit: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum — 1992-03-17 — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Farming in Kingfisher did not pay, so his father took work with his brother's mortgage company as an agent for Metropolitan Life, foreclosing on farms through the Depression while the family moved from one small Missouri town to the next. The boy milked the cow, bottled the surplus and drove it to customers, ran a paper route and sold magazine subscriptions. In the eighth grade at Shelbina he became the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of the state. He took a degree in economics at the University of Missouri in 1940, was voted permanent president of his class, and started at J. C. Penney as a management trainee three days after graduating, at 75 dollars a month. The Army put him in intelligence, guarding aircraft plants.

He bought a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, in 1945 with 20,000 dollars borrowed from his father-in-law and 5,000 he had saved. Sales went from 80,000 dollars to 225,000 in three years, at which point the landlord declined to renew the lease and took the store back. Walton started again in Bentonville on May 9, 1950, and by 1962 he and his brother Bud had 16 of them. On July 2, 1962, he opened the first Wal-Mart Discount City in Rogers, Arkansas, on a proposition the industry had ignored: put large discount stores in small towns, dominate the surrounding trade, and supply it from warehouses no more than a day's drive away. The company went public on October 1, 1970. By 1987 it had 1,198 stores, 15.9 billion dollars in sales and 200,000 employees.

The model ran on wages. In 1970, when the Retail Clerks tried to organize two stores in small Missouri towns, Walton hired a professional union buster to run the campaign against them. Forbes made him the richest person in the United States from 1982 through 1988, and he lost the title only because the editors began splitting the fortune between him and his four children. The stores did to other people's main streets something close to what his father's work had done to other people's farms — the pattern is common enough that economists gave it a name, the Walmart effect — and the towns that thinned out were the kind of town that raised him. He never made a secret of the method. Low prices came out of low costs, and labor is a cost.

George H. W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in March 1992. He died of multiple myeloma at Little Rock on April 5, three weeks later, after going over sales figures in his hospital bed. The news went out by satellite to 1,960 stores and 400,000 employees, and his memoir, Made in America, appeared the same year. What he left is now the largest company on earth by revenue, at 713 billion dollars and 2.1 million employees in 2025, and a family that held five places in the American top ten until 2005. Some of the money built Crystal Bridges, the art museum his daughter Alice opened in Bentonville in 2011, a short walk from the five-and-dime.

Lifespan

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Sam Walton's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

Walton's Five and Dime, Bentonville company
Opened May 9, 1950, and now the Walmart Museum 1950
Wal-Mart Discount City company
The first store, at Rogers, Arkansas, July 2, 1962 1962
Walmart public offering company
Listed October 1, 1970, and soon after on the New York Stock Exchange 1970
Sam's Club company
Founded as Sam's Wholesale Club, a members-only warehouse chain 1983
Sam Walton: Made in America book
Written with John Huey and published the year he died 1992

Life in brief

with age at each point

1932 aged ~14 Becomes the youngest Eagle Scout in Missouri history He was in the eighth grade at Shelbina.
1940 aged ~22 Joins J. C. Penney as a trainee at 75 dollars a month Three days after taking his economics degree.
February 14, 1943 aged 24 Marries Helen Robson Her father lent him the 20,000 dollars that bought the first store.
1945 aged ~27 Buys a Ben Franklin variety store at Newport, Arkansas, at 26 He tripled the sales and then lost the lease.
May 9, 1950 aged 32 Opens Walton's Five and Dime on the Bentonville square
July 2, 1962 aged 44 Opens the first Wal-Mart Discount City at Rogers, Arkansas Small towns, big stores, and warehouses within a day's drive.
October 1, 1970 aged 52 The company goes public
1970 aged ~52 Hires a professional union buster against a Retail Clerks drive Two stores in small Missouri towns were the target.
April 5, 1992 aged 74 Dies at Little Rock, three weeks after the Medal of Freedom Walmart then had 1,735 stores and annual sales near 50 billion dollars.