On this episode of Our American Stories, regular contributor, Anne Clare, tells the story of a unique aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington. Tom Zoellner purchased a diamond engagement ring and proposed. His girlfriend said, "yes" and then, suddenly, walked out of his life making Tom the owner of a used engagement ring. Instead of hitting the self-help shelves of his local bookstore, he hit the road to discover the true worth of this shining gem and then wrote The Heartless Stone. Mike Freeman, author of Clarence Saunders & the Founding of Piggly Wiggly: The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick, tells us how Clarence Saunders revolutionized the way people shopped by developing “self-service” grocery shopping.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - The USS Lexington, The Naval Juggernaut
10:00 - The Shocking Story Behind the Diamond Engagement Ring
23:00 - How Piggly Wiggly Created the Modern Supermarket
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habibe, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The USS Lexington was the first aircraft carrier to deploy
air to surface missiles, and it sailed enough miles to
circle the globe eight times, standing as tall as a
(00:30):
nineteen story building. There's much more to this warship. Here's
our regular contributor Anne Claire with a story. I was
an elementary school when I saw my first aircraft carrier.
My family and I had gone to visit my aunt
(00:51):
and uncle in South Carolina. My uncle had retired from
the Navy and was working at Patriots Point, where there
are a number of US Navy vessels that are now museums.
He took us up onto the flight deck of the
USS Yorktown. This would be the Yorktown not that was
sunk at Midway, but the one that was named after it,
(01:13):
that served at the end of World War Two. And
I just recall standing on that enormous flight deck and
just being an awe and kind of fascinated by these
huge ships that were just so unique. As an adult
moving to the Pacific Northwest, I ended up with the
(01:33):
opportunity to see a few more aircraft carriers, though those
the ones I've seen out here are not museums. They're
still sailing, which is even more impressive. They're just really
interesting ships. As I was doing some reading in history
recently though about some of the very first aircraft carriers
in the United States Navy, I was impressed not so
(01:55):
much by size or uniqueness, but by their versatility, especially
when I got into the story of the USS Lexington.
The USS Lexington was the fourth US ship to bear
that name, the name of the place where the American
Revolution started, Lexington. It was also the second aircraft carrier
(02:20):
produced by the United States. However, at first it wasn't
supposed to be an aircraft carrier. The Lexington was laid
down in nineteen twenty one in Quincy, Massachusetts as a
battle cruiser. In nineteen twenty two, they switched gears and
converted her into an aircraft carrier, the second one, as
I said, following the Langley, which was also converted from
(02:44):
a different type of ship. The Lady lex was launched
in twenty five and commissioned in twenty seven, and along
with the Saratoga, which was the following aircraft carrier, the
third one, the Lexington was sent to operate in the
Pacific Ocean. Now, while the Lexington was a ship with
capabilities for war, Lady lex also served in some unique
(03:07):
ways during peacetime. She started out as a battle cruiser,
changed to an aircraft carrier, and then when Nita Rose
became a temporary power plant. In nineteen twenty nine, the
US stock market crashed and the Great Depression began, and
(03:27):
on top of the economic disaster, the city of Tacoma,
Washington faced a serious power shortage. The city depended on
hydroelectric power from Lake Cushman and the Nisqually River. But unfortunately,
on top of all the other troubles in the world,
unusual cold weather and a drought the previous fall meant
that there simply wasn't enough build up of water behind
(03:49):
the dams to power the city. So as they sought
for a solution, they found it in the Lexington. They
brought in an aircraft carrier of all things. On December fifteenth,
nineteen twenty one, the Lexington was hooked up at Tacoma's
Baker Dock to the city's electrical grid, and for twelve
(04:13):
hours each day, the Lexington generated and transmitted about twenty
thousand kilowatts of power, and this went on for quite
some time. The calendar page churned and Lexington was still
there into January, but by January sixteenth of nineteen thirty
enough water had built up behind the dams to serve
Tacoma's needs again and the crisis was averted. The Lexington
(04:36):
was able to return to her regular duties now. The
following year, the Lexington was actually called upon for another
mission of mercy, transporting disaster relief supplies and personnel to
the aftermath of a terrible earthquake and fire in Managua, Nicaragua.
Of course, peacetime missions weren't the only missions that Lexington
(04:56):
had to be involved in. On December seventh of nine
forty one, fortunately, the Lexington was not in Pearl Harbor
along with other aircrafts. She was out to sea. At
this time, the Lexington was busy transporting marine planes to
Midway Highland, but once America entered World War Two, the
(05:17):
Lexington became involved as well. In nineteen forty two, Admiral
Nimitz sent the aircraft carriers USS Yorktown and USS Lexington,
along with several American and Australian cruisers to meet a
Japanese fleet including three aircraft carriers in the Coral Sea.
(05:38):
Now the Lexington suffered multiple hits in the ensuing battle.
The crew worked furiously to repair the Lady Lex and
put out the fires burning within her, and for a
while it appeared they were succeeding, But twelve minutes after
the ship's log reported that all of the fires below
decks were put out, the following entry was logged and
I quote heavy explode jan felt which vented up forward
(06:02):
bomb elevator lost communication with central station. More explosions ended
up shaking the Lexington and the systems failed. New fires
blazed in spite of all the crew's efforts. In the end,
Lexington was abandoned and scuttled. There there she rested undisturbed
until where remains rediscovered in twenty eighteen and a beautiful
(06:30):
job on the production by Madison Derricutt and a special
thanks to Anne Claire for sharing with us the story
of the USS Lexington, otherwise known as Lady Lex and
Lady Lex saw action in the Coral Sea, but Lady
Lex also helped in other ways, becoming a power plant
for the city of Tacoma and also providing relief to
(06:53):
the people of Nicaragua after a natural disaster. Luckily for
Lady Lex, she was not in Pearl Harbor in nineteen
forty one. She was busily transporting planes to Midway Island.
The story of Lady Lex here on Our American Stories.
(07:30):
Lee Habibi here the host of Our American Stories. Every
day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across
this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you here, go to
our American Stories dot Com and click the donate button.
(07:52):
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give This is our American Stories
(08:14):
and our next story is about a gem. It turns
out diamonds haven't always been rare stones since eighteen seventy
when huge diamond mines were discovered in South Africa. Soon
after that discovery, the British financiers behind the South African
mining effort realized the diamond market would be saturated if
(08:37):
they didn't do something about it. So in eighteen eighty eight.
They set two audacious goals. One monopolized diamond prices by
creating de beers minds. To beers would then be able
to stabilize the market by creating both the supply and
the demand for diamonds worldwide. Tom Zohlner is a journalist
(08:57):
and professor who lives in Los Angeles. He wrote the
book The Heartless Stone, a journey through the world of diamonds, deceit,
and desire. Here's Tom with the story of that journey.
My name is Tom's Owner. And when I was thirty
two years old, I entered into what is a fairly
common right of passage for a man in America. I
(09:20):
asked somebody to marry me, and I gave her a
diamond engagement ring, because that's just what you were supposed
to do. And I knew very little about diamonds. I
studied up on it as best I could, which wasn't
very deep, and I learned that there's this tradition out
(09:40):
there that you're supposed to spend two months of your
salary as a benchmark, sort of a sliding scale. For
I was expected, and I wanted to do what was expected,
So I figured out what I could afford, and I
bought her name is Anne? Was Anne? I bought her
a diamond ring, say was because the engagement broke up
(10:02):
and I was made the owner of a used diamond ring.
And I learned, Wow, there's really not a lot to
do with this. I didn't want to let go of
it for emotional reasons, and I also learned if I
was just going to sell it back on the US market,
that there really is no use market. And as the
(10:25):
ring just sort of sat there in the back of
my closet, I began to wonder more and more about it.
And it might have been a way of channeling the
grief over the lost relationship, but I began to look
into diamonds in a way that was a little bit
deeper and a little bit different than than I did
when I was researching what to buy. I wanted to know, well,
(10:47):
where did this come from? And so this took me
on what you might call a quest. It lasted for
eighteen months, and in that time I went to sixteen
different countries on the globe to try and understand where
diamonds come from and why we hunger for them. So
(11:08):
I'll tell you just a little bit about where I went. First,
I went to a place called the Central African Republic,
which is a diamond producing nation at the heart of Africa.
It's one of the poorest countries on the globe. It produces,
It's ranks number ten in terms of diamond production among
all countries. And yet it is poverty of some of
(11:31):
the worst kind, political instability of some of the worst kind,
and those two things, unfortunately go together. I went out
to the back country and learned how diamonds are mined
for guys who are making less than a dollar an
hour to comb through the soil, very dangerous work, sometimes
(11:52):
in violent conditions, to find these pieces of carbon which
are brought up to the Earth's surface through these volcanic
tubes of what's called the Kimber light. And so you
find them in the river bottoms. And some of the
most primitive mining imaginable. And some of these diamonds, emerging
(12:13):
from such miserable conditions, still find their way to the
US market. I went to Angola, another nation in Africa,
of course, which has been racked with had been racked
by civil war, largely funded through the smuggling and the
sales of diamonds. I went to India, which is the
(12:35):
headquarters the state of the Indian state of Gujarat, polishes
the majority of diamonds in the world, and I saw
the conditions in some of these factories where child labor
is used to get the diamonds into the glittery shape
that westerners have expected. I went to Russia to see
(12:58):
the birthplace and still the headquarters of the synthetic diamond industry,
a way that machines have been built to recreate the
heat and the pressure and the Earth's mantle that create
the diamonds in the first place. And then I took
a long look at the marketing history of the diamond
(13:19):
the way that these shiny pebbles have been sold to
Western consumers through the genius and I say that word
with a certain amount of respect, but also advisedly. The
genius of the corporation called De Beers consolidated minds, which
cornered the market in South Africa in the eighteen nineties
(13:44):
thanks to the scheming of an Oxford graduate named Cecil Rhoads,
for whom the Rhodes Scholars are named. Cecil Rhoads founded
the De Beers Corporation and he hit upon the inside.
The way that you create high prices for these for
(14:05):
these little minerals, is that you just simply create artificial
scarcity in the market, which is what he did and
what De Beers continues to try and accomplish, even though
it no longer dominates the market as it did today.
So it was not only a hive of artificial scarcity,
it was also a marketing factory. It was the De
(14:29):
Beers Corporation that created this idea out of whole cloth,
an invented custom that a young man is supposed to
spend two months of his salary on his Sweethearts engagement ring.
That turns out it sounds like something from Charles Dickens,
but it's actually a complete marketing fable, and it was
(14:50):
also out of the De Beer's idea factory. With the
help of a New York ad agency called J. Walter Thompson,
this idea of the eternity of a diamond, the poetry
surrounding this trinket. I look back at some of the
ads that were created in the Great Depression to convince
(15:13):
American men that this is what they needed to do
just to spend money. Even in the midst of a depression,
and the ads all centered around the idea of temporality
and of mortality, and of the idea that this diamond
is going to survive you. It's almost rather morbid, but
this was a successful advertising strategy, and it was out
(15:35):
of this notion that your diamond will last beyond you
that the brilliant slogan was coined. A diamond is forever.
The diamond engagement ring alas could two months salary last forever,
A diamond is forever to beyers. So just to give
(15:59):
respect where respect does due. There is something chemically unique
about a diamonds as it goes on the mass scale
of density, it is a ten out of a ten scale.
Almost no other mineral. In fact, no other mineral has
the ability to slow down light within the chamber of
(16:20):
its interiors. This is why a diamond sparkles so well.
The speed of light at one hundred and eighty six
thousand miles per second has slowed down to seventy seven
thousand miles per second within a diamond, which is why
it sparkles. And when you polish it in a particular configuration,
the effect is really dazzling. I have no issue with
(16:45):
that but slow down the light. In some ways as
a metaphor for the diamond itself, it is a chamber
of slow light and emptiness. Because at the heart of
the diamond, which was my conclusion, his mythology, the mythology
(17:05):
that society has spun around it, and the individual mythologies
that we put around diamonds, the story we tell about them,
which is, in fact, in its most prominent feature, the
story of our engagement, the story of our marriage, one
of the most mysterious and frightening and lovely and potentially
heartbreaking things that we get to do. The genius of
(17:29):
the tabiers and the diamond industry was that it was
able to set up a toll booth right at the
entrance to this adventure. And this, for me is the
true legacy of the diamond, and at the heart of
the book that I wrote called The Heartless Stone. And
you've been listening to Thomas Ohlner, journalist and professor, his
(17:49):
book The Heartless Stone, the story of the Diamond. Here
on our American stories, and we continue here with our
(18:09):
American stories. Grabbing a basket while grocery shopping may seem
second nature today, but the idea was once groundbreaking, and
that was far from the only thing that changed when
Pigley Wiggly, the first modern American supermarket, opened over a
hundred years ago. On September six, nineteen sixteen, hundreds of
(18:30):
curious shoppers came out for the opening of a new
grocery store at seventy nine Jefferson Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee,
and we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi. Memphis is only
one hour practically due north. For weeks they'd seen billboards
and read newspaper ads about this grocery store with the
funny name that promised an entirely new shopping experience, one that, would,
(18:52):
according to its owner, forever change the retail grocery business.
Greg Hangler sat down with Mike Freeman near the location
of that first Piggly Wiggly in downtown Memphis. Mike Freeman
is the author of Clarence Saunders and The Founding of
Piggly Wiggly, The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick.
I took a job at a restaurant in downtown Memphis
(19:14):
that happened to be at seventy nine Jefferson, and that
was the first location of the Piggley Whiggly store. It
was an interesting fact. You know, I became interested in that.
My employer wanted me to do some research because he
was curious as well. You know what happened in the
ability and such a It's important to note what Saunders
did differently was in the old days, if you went
(19:38):
into a store to shop, you couldn't just reach out
and pick out your own groceries. You had clerks do
that for you. So he had to wait for them
to you tell the clark what you want and then
they would bring it to you. And Saunders stopped, well,
this is really slow, this is so inefficient. And all
this tied in with the brand advertising. Before the turnament century,
(20:00):
he had all these brands. We still recognized, Kellogg's cereal, VanCamp,
pork and Beans. All these companies were selling their products
in the stores, and Saunders knew, well, you don't need
a clerk to tell you what cereal you like, like
Kellogg's cereal. There it is, you get it yourself. Much
(20:22):
important thing to him is I could sell more groceries
less cost, and I'd pay a fewer people. Saunders grew
up from a family that was poor. In fact, There's
one story that a neighbor bought Clarence a pair of shoes,
and then when Saunders had money later in life, he
(20:42):
sent a check to that family for a number of
years because they helped him out and he really needed it.
So he knew what it was like to suffer, you know,
from living hardship, and he carried that with him, you know,
he had that probably motivated him as much as anything
to do something. Saunders became a traveling salesman for a
(21:06):
wholesale company, so he would call upon grocers. And Saunders
developed the reputation for being a bit brash because he
would go into a store and he would tell the
store owner says, you know, you would sell more vegetables
if you displayed them this way. It's the way you
had it, And some thought, well, what does this guy know.
(21:26):
Not everybody appreciated his advice, but it shows that he
was already thinking about, you know what, trying ways to
do things a little bit better than before. There was
a man in Memphis who built a chain of stores,
mister Bowers stores. There were small, like a corner and
grocery stores, but every Bowers store looked exactly the same
(21:49):
as the signs in the front and the layout of
the store where the grocers were placed. So each Bower
stores was identical. And that was an innovation too. If
he went from one store together, you know exactly where,
define what you wanted to buy because everything was in
(22:09):
the same place, despite you know, in different locations. And
Saunders he absorbed these ideas. That's the principle of chain store.
Everything is alike as much as it can be. So
if you're comfortable with what they do, then you're shopping
a chain store, no matter where that location is. So
you could go into a town where you unfamiliar to
(22:32):
you and find your favorite and grocery, you know, whatever
the business is, or Starbucks for that matter, and get
exactly what you want. And that's the whole principal chain store.
Bowers did that before Saunders, so he clearly learned from
Bowers how to manage a chain store business. The one
thing that Bowers did not do was arranged things for
(22:57):
customers to pick out themselves, so you still had clerks.
And Saunders thought this was inefficient way of doing things,
and he was kind of sarcastic. He says, you know,
and a store is not very busy. The poor customer
can't get the attention of a clerk because they're busy
(23:18):
goofing off in the back room. He said, that bad happens,
or they're so busy, like during Christmas season, you know,
everyone's shopping in the store, so busy they can't handle
the orders properly. The arrangement of the store of Bowers
and the older merchants had was because you walked up
to a counter and once you had your clerk's attention,
(23:41):
you would rattle off what you wanted, and then he
would go about the rest of the store picking out
the items you wanted and bring them to the front,
and then you transact business and then you know, off
you go. And Saunders thought, well, you know, they don't
need a clerk to tell them that Campbell's soup is good,
(24:01):
or if you just put it on a shelf and
can find it themselves. He took this journey to Tarahope,
Indiana to look at a store that he was told
was unique and designs differently, and then he came back
a bit disappointed. It wasn't really anything especial at all.
(24:23):
And Saunders told the story off and he said, on
the way back he saw this mother pig at a farm,
and he saw all these piglets trying to feed off
the mother pig, and it reminded him of customers trying
to attract tention of a clerk. And then the idea
popped in his head. He had the name Tigley Wiggily
(24:44):
just from seeing this a pig. Okay, that's the name.
And then he went about designing, well, how are we
going to actually do this. You'd have to practically rebuild
the interior of the store to change its self service.
Tigley Wiggily, you know, that was his name, and it
was a very unusual name. I mean, I think it
(25:05):
was perfect for what he was trying to do, because
he should be different. And then he would. He began
writing advertisements where Piggy Wiggly became a character. Pigli Wiggly
goes to town. You know, Piggy Wiggily does this, and
so you know, that's how he built his brand identity.
He made a story out of imaginary pig that went shopping.
(25:31):
I'll read part of one as Piggly Wiggly. Ain't that
a funny name? The fellow that got up that name
must have a screw loose somewheres. All this may be so,
but the piggly whiggily knows its own business best, and
his business will be this to have no store clerks
gab and smirked whilst folks are standing around ten deep
(25:53):
water off. Every customer will be her own clerk. So
if she wants to talk to a Canadada to pmatoes
and killer time, all right and well, but it seems
likely this would be a mighty lonesome chat. Saunders addressed
customer fears. You know, it used to be if you
(26:14):
went into certain stores in the old days, and you know,
the clerk might put his thumb on the scale, so
you'd pay extra for tomatoes or potatoes or whatever, or
they'd sell you food that was out of date. And
Saunders thought all that was just just raw. It was
just not good business. He could sell more groceries just
(26:36):
by being honest. He was very proud of. He talked
a lot about labeling prices on everything. So you walk
in and you go to the canned soup aile, you
know exactly what the price of that soup is. And
it didn't matter what story you're in one of his stores.
(26:57):
They all priced things about the same and it didn't
matter who who you were, or whether the clerk knew
you or not, you got the same prize. When we
come back, more of Mike Freeman telling the story of
Clarence Saunders, the founder of Pigley Wiggly. Here on our
American story and we continue with our American stories and
(27:39):
with author Mike Freeman telling the story of Pigley Wiggly
and its founder Clarence Saunders. Let's continue with Mike. He
knew he was taking a less profit and he probably
had people in the grocery business said who didn't can't
make any money. You're not selling high of him, You're
not making enough profit. But he was linking of volume,
(28:01):
you know, and you can open. The more stores you open,
the more volume you have, and then you know, you know,
one of the benefits of self services you are selling
more goods per day and that helps eliminate the problem
of spoiled food or expired food. And Saunders was aware
(28:24):
of that and he would advertise to people, see this
is what I'm doing. I'm gonna treat you fair. I mean, now,
you can't imagine going in a store not having a
label on it. And this is thirty two cents or whatever.
Can't imagine it, but for you know, the twentieth century,
that was common place. And when once you label everything,
(28:46):
then no grocery store can hide. You know, his competitors
are thinking, oh, you know, you're gonna have to do
something different. You know, he proved right there that first
year that he had about eight or nine stores in
Memphis and Bowers had over four party and he outsold
Bowers stores simply because he made it easier for people's
(29:07):
shop and they just started swarming into this, into bigger wiggles.
You know. He's one of those rare individuals that has
an idea that worked and it transformed part of our society.
I don't say he's as great as Henry Ford, but
you know Ford decided, well, why and why can't we
(29:28):
put an engine in this little carriage and then hook
it up to some wheels, and then we don't need
a horse and bug anymore. We have a car change
the world. No, Saunders isn't of that level of success,
but I think he had the same mind where he thought, well,
let's do something a little different here, you know the
old ways, or yeah, you can do a little faster
(29:49):
a little bit better than that, and then that's what
Pigglulu was. Grocery stores version of the model TV as
interesting as the next year he started franchising, and he
actually filed for several patterns and had several patents. But
he started selling the idea that well, you guys down
(30:13):
in Arkansas and missus m you can build a pig
of You know, there's towns all over the South that
were large enough to support a couple of grocery store
and that proceeded very rapid leagues selling franchises all over
the place. You could argue that the founder of Walmart
the virtually the same thing. He put a Walmart and
(30:33):
the medium sized towns. You know, a town doesn't have
a Walmart, and it's kind of not a town. But
having a store like that in your community, hiring the
local folks to work in the store, probably manage the store.
It built a loyalty for their brand for Walmart still exists.
The difference between Waldon and Saunders is Walton never lost
(30:55):
his business, he held onto it, where I think Saunders
had a lot out of the same attitude's same personality.
In some way, he wanted to be that champion, but
in the end he didn't keep that business long enough.
You know, right now most people don't know who Saunders in.
Saunders achieved a level of celebrity and wealth that must
(31:16):
people owning dream of. He's most famous for. The Pig
Palace is a building I don't know how maybe square feet.
Well they've added on to it, but a majority of
that thirty six thus of square feet is what he built.
And it was to have a swimming pool. He was
(31:37):
to have everything a rich person with the walk. Saunders
tried to outsmart traders of Wall Street, and to explain
it simply, he didn't realize they wrote the rules of trade.
There was no governing agency overseeing financial trade that we
have now. It was whatever certain people who what we
(32:00):
call Wall Street decided to do is what was done.
They made the rules among themselves. I have trouble sometimes
describing a short sell as a stock maneuver, where different
people in the financial business spread rumors at the companies
in trouble, that's stocks of what not worth what it's
(32:23):
listing at now, And Saunders thought that was horrible. Piggily
Weekly had overexpanded and there was a franchise or two
that had gone bankrupt, and that was all the trigger
that these short sellers needed. And he started this campaign
is take the shares out of the hands of these
Wall Street thieves or wolves. And he started a buying
(32:46):
campaign in Memphis, you know, saved Piggy Wiggily for Memphis.
His most people in Memphis or you know, any city
outside of New York probably thought about Wall Street saying
was he dead? And it was sort of a this
kind of a villainous place, and he was playing on that.
You know, no, let these thieves take our figure wiggled
away from us. So everyone invested in the Saunders scheme
(33:08):
to buy all the shares and hold them. Well, he
pushed these these traders into a paddock because whatever they borrow,
they have to pay, and if he's buying all the shares,
they have to come to him to repay what they
owe him. I mean, he was trying to trap them.
(33:29):
And the Border directors of the Stock Exchange in New
York kept Saunders from doing that and let let the
traders off the hook. They could change the rules. See
there's no government agency overseeing stock turning. Whatever the Border
directors thought was legal was illegal, and especially if they
(33:50):
had friends who got caught up in the scheme and begging,
you know, don't let us die out here, that's well,
we'll let Saunders die. You know, they don't know him,
they don't care about him. He's not part of their
social group or anything like that at all. He's just
some hillbilly from Tennessee who thought he knew what he
was doing. They just you know, interpreted rules. So let
(34:11):
him die. So he had borrowed all that money. Instead
of gaining what he thought would be hundreds of millions
of dollars, he had nothing, you know, twelve millions, a
lot of money today to loose. Imagine what it was
like in nineteen twenty three. What Saunders had done, and
there weren't people that really liked him because he was,
(34:32):
you know, come very famous, was that he had begged
Memphis to pull together money to pay off this debt
so Piggy Wiggily could get back to normal operating under
his leadership. And people did. They had rallies or save
Piggy Wiggily from Memphis, And that was a kamnay. Not
(34:55):
for Saunders. He was careful to say, save Piggy Wiggily
from Memphis. And he had a point there too. I mean,
you know, there's a lot of jobs in Memphis now
because of this store, this business, and then he made
the dumb mistake of putting money into this what we
now know is to take palace, which was an extravagant home.
(35:15):
This is you know, and people that invested in Picklewell
must have been shocked. Is what are in the world
are you doing. We're taking time away from our business,
spending our money to bail you out, and you're building
the stupid house. You know you don't have time for
that anymore. How did they find out about it? While
(35:37):
a workman had been injured in the newspaper published a
story you know it Hobly calory. You know, they couldn't
believe it. It was this terrible mistake, you back, and
it cost him well. I mean, he tried to get
in to make money, and he did, but I mean
he's still famous for what I think he wigged and
(35:59):
he lost her in the company of six years. I
guess that the story was markl in itself, is that
he started with one store. Six years later he had
a thousand I mean, you know, I had superstantial chain.
But I mean he was successful. He did build something
(36:21):
that was unique. He just didn't hold on to him.
He would be Sam Walton today, or his memory would
be as big as Sam Walton if he had just
held on into Piggy Whigglely. Like Walton held out into Walmart.
The most fitting memorial to him is the ordinary self
service store. Sam Walton founded Walmart in nineteen sixty two.
(36:45):
By the end of his life in nineteen ninety two,
Walton owned the largest retail merchandising company in the world.
In his autobiography Sam Walton Made in America, he credited
the enormous success it was retail stores to the principle
of self service. His brief description of the benefits that
(37:06):
self service gave to him and his desire to pass
on the savings to his customers seemed to be a
near match to saunders Own words two generations before. During
the past twenty five years, supermarkets and large merchandise stores
have become popular in nearly every country in Europe, Asia,
(37:27):
Latin America, in parts of Africa. In an odd way,
Clarence saunders prophetic slogan for Piggley Wiggly all over the
world has come true and great job on the piece
as always by Greg Hangler, and his special thanks to
Mike Freeman who wrote the book Clarence Saunders and the
Founding of Piggy Wiggly and What a story, and that
(37:48):
he started the idea of pricing and transparency and volume
so that we could lower profits on each individual item
but make up for that with volume, and that is
indeed what Sam Walton. There's no doubt that Sam took
a lot of the ideas of Piggy Wiggly and scaled
them to a much larger operation. The story of Piggley Wiggly,
(38:10):
the story of Clarence Saunders here on our American Story
This is Lee Habibe, and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The USS Lexington was the first aircraft carrier to deploy
air to surface missiles, and it sailed enough miles to
circle the globe eight times, standing as tall as a
(00:30):
nineteen story building. There's much more to this warship. Here's
our regular contributor Anne Claire with a story. I was
an elementary school when I saw my first aircraft carrier.
My family and I had gone to visit my aunt
(00:51):
and uncle in South Carolina. My uncle had retired from
the Navy and was working at Patriots Point, where there
are a number of US Navy vessels that are now museums.
He took us up onto the flight deck of the
USS Yorktown. This would be the Yorktown not that was
sunk at Midway, but the one that was named after it,
(01:13):
that served at the end of World War Two. And
I just recall standing on that enormous flight deck and
just being an awe and kind of fascinated by these
huge ships that were just so unique. As an adult
moving to the Pacific Northwest, I ended up with the
(01:33):
opportunity to see a few more aircraft carriers, though those
the ones I've seen out here are not museums. They're
still sailing, which is even more impressive. They're just really
interesting ships. As I was doing some reading in history
recently though about some of the very first aircraft carriers
in the United States Navy, I was impressed not so
(01:55):
much by size or uniqueness, but by their versatility, especially
when I got into the story of the USS Lexington.
The USS Lexington was the fourth US ship to bear
that name, the name of the place where the American
Revolution started, Lexington. It was also the second aircraft carrier
(02:20):
produced by the United States. However, at first it wasn't
supposed to be an aircraft carrier. The Lexington was laid
down in nineteen twenty one in Quincy, Massachusetts as a
battle cruiser. In nineteen twenty two, they switched gears and
converted her into an aircraft carrier, the second one, as
I said, following the Langley, which was also converted from
(02:44):
a different type of ship. The Lady lex was launched
in twenty five and commissioned in twenty seven, and along
with the Saratoga, which was the following aircraft carrier, the
third one, the Lexington was sent to operate in the
Pacific Ocean. Now, while the Lexington was a ship with
capabilities for war, Lady lex also served in some unique
(03:07):
ways during peacetime. She started out as a battle cruiser,
changed to an aircraft carrier, and then when Nita Rose
became a temporary power plant. In nineteen twenty nine, the
US stock market crashed and the Great Depression began, and
(03:27):
on top of the economic disaster, the city of Tacoma,
Washington faced a serious power shortage. The city depended on
hydroelectric power from Lake Cushman and the Nisqually River. But unfortunately,
on top of all the other troubles in the world,
unusual cold weather and a drought the previous fall meant
that there simply wasn't enough build up of water behind
(03:49):
the dams to power the city. So as they sought
for a solution, they found it in the Lexington. They
brought in an aircraft carrier of all things. On December fifteenth,
nineteen twenty one, the Lexington was hooked up at Tacoma's
Baker Dock to the city's electrical grid, and for twelve
(04:13):
hours each day, the Lexington generated and transmitted about twenty
thousand kilowatts of power, and this went on for quite
some time. The calendar page churned and Lexington was still
there into January, but by January sixteenth of nineteen thirty
enough water had built up behind the dams to serve
Tacoma's needs again and the crisis was averted. The Lexington
(04:36):
was able to return to her regular duties now. The
following year, the Lexington was actually called upon for another
mission of mercy, transporting disaster relief supplies and personnel to
the aftermath of a terrible earthquake and fire in Managua, Nicaragua.
Of course, peacetime missions weren't the only missions that Lexington
(04:56):
had to be involved in. On December seventh of nine
forty one, fortunately, the Lexington was not in Pearl Harbor
along with other aircrafts. She was out to sea. At
this time, the Lexington was busy transporting marine planes to
Midway Highland, but once America entered World War Two, the
(05:17):
Lexington became involved as well. In nineteen forty two, Admiral
Nimitz sent the aircraft carriers USS Yorktown and USS Lexington,
along with several American and Australian cruisers to meet a
Japanese fleet including three aircraft carriers in the Coral Sea.
(05:38):
Now the Lexington suffered multiple hits in the ensuing battle.
The crew worked furiously to repair the Lady Lex and
put out the fires burning within her, and for a
while it appeared they were succeeding, But twelve minutes after
the ship's log reported that all of the fires below
decks were put out, the following entry was logged and
I quote heavy explode jan felt which vented up forward
(06:02):
bomb elevator lost communication with central station. More explosions ended
up shaking the Lexington and the systems failed. New fires
blazed in spite of all the crew's efforts. In the end,
Lexington was abandoned and scuttled. There there she rested undisturbed
until where remains rediscovered in twenty eighteen and a beautiful
(06:30):
job on the production by Madison Derricutt and a special
thanks to Anne Claire for sharing with us the story
of the USS Lexington, otherwise known as Lady Lex and
Lady Lex saw action in the Coral Sea, but Lady
Lex also helped in other ways, becoming a power plant
for the city of Tacoma and also providing relief to
(06:53):
the people of Nicaragua after a natural disaster. Luckily for
Lady Lex, she was not in Pearl Harbor in nineteen
forty one. She was busily transporting planes to Midway Island.
The story of Lady Lex here on Our American Stories.
(07:30):
Lee Habibi here the host of Our American Stories. Every
day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across
this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.
But we truly can't do the show without you. Our
stories are free to listen to, but they're not free
to make. If you love what you here, go to
our American Stories dot Com and click the donate button.
(07:52):
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give This is our American Stories
(08:14):
and our next story is about a gem. It turns
out diamonds haven't always been rare stones since eighteen seventy
when huge diamond mines were discovered in South Africa. Soon
after that discovery, the British financiers behind the South African
mining effort realized the diamond market would be saturated if
(08:37):
they didn't do something about it. So in eighteen eighty eight.
They set two audacious goals. One monopolized diamond prices by
creating de beers minds. To beers would then be able
to stabilize the market by creating both the supply and
the demand for diamonds worldwide. Tom Zohlner is a journalist
(08:57):
and professor who lives in Los Angeles. He wrote the
book The Heartless Stone, a journey through the world of diamonds, deceit,
and desire. Here's Tom with the story of that journey.
My name is Tom's Owner. And when I was thirty
two years old, I entered into what is a fairly
common right of passage for a man in America. I
(09:20):
asked somebody to marry me, and I gave her a
diamond engagement ring, because that's just what you were supposed
to do. And I knew very little about diamonds. I
studied up on it as best I could, which wasn't
very deep, and I learned that there's this tradition out
(09:40):
there that you're supposed to spend two months of your
salary as a benchmark, sort of a sliding scale. For
I was expected, and I wanted to do what was expected,
So I figured out what I could afford, and I
bought her name is Anne? Was Anne? I bought her
a diamond ring, say was because the engagement broke up
(10:02):
and I was made the owner of a used diamond ring.
And I learned, Wow, there's really not a lot to
do with this. I didn't want to let go of
it for emotional reasons, and I also learned if I
was just going to sell it back on the US market,
that there really is no use market. And as the
(10:25):
ring just sort of sat there in the back of
my closet, I began to wonder more and more about it.
And it might have been a way of channeling the
grief over the lost relationship, but I began to look
into diamonds in a way that was a little bit
deeper and a little bit different than than I did
when I was researching what to buy. I wanted to know, well,
(10:47):
where did this come from? And so this took me
on what you might call a quest. It lasted for
eighteen months, and in that time I went to sixteen
different countries on the globe to try and understand where
diamonds come from and why we hunger for them. So
(11:08):
I'll tell you just a little bit about where I went. First,
I went to a place called the Central African Republic,
which is a diamond producing nation at the heart of Africa.
It's one of the poorest countries on the globe. It produces,
It's ranks number ten in terms of diamond production among
all countries. And yet it is poverty of some of
(11:31):
the worst kind, political instability of some of the worst kind,
and those two things, unfortunately go together. I went out
to the back country and learned how diamonds are mined
for guys who are making less than a dollar an
hour to comb through the soil, very dangerous work, sometimes
(11:52):
in violent conditions, to find these pieces of carbon which
are brought up to the Earth's surface through these volcanic
tubes of what's called the Kimber light. And so you
find them in the river bottoms. And some of the
most primitive mining imaginable. And some of these diamonds, emerging
(12:13):
from such miserable conditions, still find their way to the
US market. I went to Angola, another nation in Africa,
of course, which has been racked with had been racked
by civil war, largely funded through the smuggling and the
sales of diamonds. I went to India, which is the
(12:35):
headquarters the state of the Indian state of Gujarat, polishes
the majority of diamonds in the world, and I saw
the conditions in some of these factories where child labor
is used to get the diamonds into the glittery shape
that westerners have expected. I went to Russia to see
(12:58):
the birthplace and still the headquarters of the synthetic diamond industry,
a way that machines have been built to recreate the
heat and the pressure and the Earth's mantle that create
the diamonds in the first place. And then I took
a long look at the marketing history of the diamond
(13:19):
the way that these shiny pebbles have been sold to
Western consumers through the genius and I say that word
with a certain amount of respect, but also advisedly. The
genius of the corporation called De Beers consolidated minds, which
cornered the market in South Africa in the eighteen nineties
(13:44):
thanks to the scheming of an Oxford graduate named Cecil Rhoads,
for whom the Rhodes Scholars are named. Cecil Rhoads founded
the De Beers Corporation and he hit upon the inside.
The way that you create high prices for these for
(14:05):
these little minerals, is that you just simply create artificial
scarcity in the market, which is what he did and
what De Beers continues to try and accomplish, even though
it no longer dominates the market as it did today.
So it was not only a hive of artificial scarcity,
it was also a marketing factory. It was the De
(14:29):
Beers Corporation that created this idea out of whole cloth,
an invented custom that a young man is supposed to
spend two months of his salary on his Sweethearts engagement ring.
That turns out it sounds like something from Charles Dickens,
but it's actually a complete marketing fable, and it was
(14:50):
also out of the De Beer's idea factory. With the
help of a New York ad agency called J. Walter Thompson,
this idea of the eternity of a diamond, the poetry
surrounding this trinket. I look back at some of the
ads that were created in the Great Depression to convince
(15:13):
American men that this is what they needed to do
just to spend money. Even in the midst of a depression,
and the ads all centered around the idea of temporality
and of mortality, and of the idea that this diamond
is going to survive you. It's almost rather morbid, but
this was a successful advertising strategy, and it was out
(15:35):
of this notion that your diamond will last beyond you
that the brilliant slogan was coined. A diamond is forever.
The diamond engagement ring alas could two months salary last forever,
A diamond is forever to beyers. So just to give
(15:59):
respect where respect does due. There is something chemically unique
about a diamonds as it goes on the mass scale
of density, it is a ten out of a ten scale.
Almost no other mineral. In fact, no other mineral has
the ability to slow down light within the chamber of
(16:20):
its interiors. This is why a diamond sparkles so well.
The speed of light at one hundred and eighty six
thousand miles per second has slowed down to seventy seven
thousand miles per second within a diamond, which is why
it sparkles. And when you polish it in a particular configuration,
the effect is really dazzling. I have no issue with
(16:45):
that but slow down the light. In some ways as
a metaphor for the diamond itself, it is a chamber
of slow light and emptiness. Because at the heart of
the diamond, which was my conclusion, his mythology, the mythology
(17:05):
that society has spun around it, and the individual mythologies
that we put around diamonds, the story we tell about them,
which is, in fact, in its most prominent feature, the
story of our engagement, the story of our marriage, one
of the most mysterious and frightening and lovely and potentially
heartbreaking things that we get to do. The genius of
(17:29):
the tabiers and the diamond industry was that it was
able to set up a toll booth right at the
entrance to this adventure. And this, for me is the
true legacy of the diamond, and at the heart of
the book that I wrote called The Heartless Stone. And
you've been listening to Thomas Ohlner, journalist and professor, his
(17:49):
book The Heartless Stone, the story of the Diamond. Here
on our American stories, and we continue here with our
(18:09):
American stories. Grabbing a basket while grocery shopping may seem
second nature today, but the idea was once groundbreaking, and
that was far from the only thing that changed when
Pigley Wiggly, the first modern American supermarket, opened over a
hundred years ago. On September six, nineteen sixteen, hundreds of
(18:30):
curious shoppers came out for the opening of a new
grocery store at seventy nine Jefferson Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee,
and we broadcast here in Oxford, Mississippi. Memphis is only
one hour practically due north. For weeks they'd seen billboards
and read newspaper ads about this grocery store with the
funny name that promised an entirely new shopping experience, one that, would,
(18:52):
according to its owner, forever change the retail grocery business.
Greg Hangler sat down with Mike Freeman near the location
of that first Piggly Wiggly in downtown Memphis. Mike Freeman
is the author of Clarence Saunders and The Founding of
Piggly Wiggly, The Rise and Fall of a Memphis Maverick.
I took a job at a restaurant in downtown Memphis
(19:14):
that happened to be at seventy nine Jefferson, and that
was the first location of the Piggley Whiggly store. It
was an interesting fact. You know, I became interested in that.
My employer wanted me to do some research because he
was curious as well. You know what happened in the
ability and such a It's important to note what Saunders
did differently was in the old days, if you went
(19:38):
into a store to shop, you couldn't just reach out
and pick out your own groceries. You had clerks do
that for you. So he had to wait for them
to you tell the clark what you want and then
they would bring it to you. And Saunders stopped, well,
this is really slow, this is so inefficient. And all
this tied in with the brand advertising. Before the turnament century,
(20:00):
he had all these brands. We still recognized, Kellogg's cereal, VanCamp,
pork and Beans. All these companies were selling their products
in the stores, and Saunders knew, well, you don't need
a clerk to tell you what cereal you like, like
Kellogg's cereal. There it is, you get it yourself. Much
(20:22):
important thing to him is I could sell more groceries
less cost, and I'd pay a fewer people. Saunders grew
up from a family that was poor. In fact, There's
one story that a neighbor bought Clarence a pair of shoes,
and then when Saunders had money later in life, he
(20:42):
sent a check to that family for a number of
years because they helped him out and he really needed it.
So he knew what it was like to suffer, you know,
from living hardship, and he carried that with him, you know,
he had that probably motivated him as much as anything
to do something. Saunders became a traveling salesman for a
(21:06):
wholesale company, so he would call upon grocers. And Saunders
developed the reputation for being a bit brash because he
would go into a store and he would tell the
store owner says, you know, you would sell more vegetables
if you displayed them this way. It's the way you
had it, And some thought, well, what does this guy know.
(21:26):
Not everybody appreciated his advice, but it shows that he
was already thinking about, you know what, trying ways to
do things a little bit better than before. There was
a man in Memphis who built a chain of stores,
mister Bowers stores. There were small, like a corner and
grocery stores, but every Bowers store looked exactly the same
(21:49):
as the signs in the front and the layout of
the store where the grocers were placed. So each Bower
stores was identical. And that was an innovation too. If
he went from one store together, you know exactly where,
define what you wanted to buy because everything was in
(22:09):
the same place, despite you know, in different locations. And
Saunders he absorbed these ideas. That's the principle of chain store.
Everything is alike as much as it can be. So
if you're comfortable with what they do, then you're shopping
a chain store, no matter where that location is. So
you could go into a town where you unfamiliar to
(22:32):
you and find your favorite and grocery, you know, whatever
the business is, or Starbucks for that matter, and get
exactly what you want. And that's the whole principal chain store.
Bowers did that before Saunders, so he clearly learned from
Bowers how to manage a chain store business. The one
thing that Bowers did not do was arranged things for
(22:57):
customers to pick out themselves, so you still had clerks.
And Saunders thought this was inefficient way of doing things,
and he was kind of sarcastic. He says, you know,
and a store is not very busy. The poor customer
can't get the attention of a clerk because they're busy
(23:18):
goofing off in the back room. He said, that bad happens,
or they're so busy, like during Christmas season, you know,
everyone's shopping in the store, so busy they can't handle
the orders properly. The arrangement of the store of Bowers
and the older merchants had was because you walked up
to a counter and once you had your clerk's attention,
(23:41):
you would rattle off what you wanted, and then he
would go about the rest of the store picking out
the items you wanted and bring them to the front,
and then you transact business and then you know, off
you go. And Saunders thought, well, you know, they don't
need a clerk to tell them that Campbell's soup is good,
(24:01):
or if you just put it on a shelf and
can find it themselves. He took this journey to Tarahope,
Indiana to look at a store that he was told
was unique and designs differently, and then he came back
a bit disappointed. It wasn't really anything especial at all.
(24:23):
And Saunders told the story off and he said, on
the way back he saw this mother pig at a farm,
and he saw all these piglets trying to feed off
the mother pig, and it reminded him of customers trying
to attract tention of a clerk. And then the idea
popped in his head. He had the name Tigley Wiggily
(24:44):
just from seeing this a pig. Okay, that's the name.
And then he went about designing, well, how are we
going to actually do this. You'd have to practically rebuild
the interior of the store to change its self service.
Tigley Wiggily, you know, that was his name, and it
was a very unusual name. I mean, I think it
(25:05):
was perfect for what he was trying to do, because
he should be different. And then he would. He began
writing advertisements where Piggy Wiggly became a character. Pigli Wiggly
goes to town. You know, Piggy Wiggily does this, and
so you know, that's how he built his brand identity.
He made a story out of imaginary pig that went shopping.
(25:31):
I'll read part of one as Piggly Wiggly. Ain't that
a funny name? The fellow that got up that name
must have a screw loose somewheres. All this may be so,
but the piggly whiggily knows its own business best, and
his business will be this to have no store clerks
gab and smirked whilst folks are standing around ten deep
(25:53):
water off. Every customer will be her own clerk. So
if she wants to talk to a Canadada to pmatoes
and killer time, all right and well, but it seems
likely this would be a mighty lonesome chat. Saunders addressed
customer fears. You know, it used to be if you
(26:14):
went into certain stores in the old days, and you know,
the clerk might put his thumb on the scale, so
you'd pay extra for tomatoes or potatoes or whatever, or
they'd sell you food that was out of date. And
Saunders thought all that was just just raw. It was
just not good business. He could sell more groceries just
(26:36):
by being honest. He was very proud of. He talked
a lot about labeling prices on everything. So you walk
in and you go to the canned soup aile, you
know exactly what the price of that soup is. And
it didn't matter what story you're in one of his stores.
(26:57):
They all priced things about the same and it didn't
matter who who you were, or whether the clerk knew
you or not, you got the same prize. When we
come back, more of Mike Freeman telling the story of
Clarence Saunders, the founder of Pigley Wiggly. Here on our
American story and we continue with our American stories and
(27:39):
with author Mike Freeman telling the story of Pigley Wiggly
and its founder Clarence Saunders. Let's continue with Mike. He
knew he was taking a less profit and he probably
had people in the grocery business said who didn't can't
make any money. You're not selling high of him, You're
not making enough profit. But he was linking of volume,
(28:01):
you know, and you can open. The more stores you open,
the more volume you have, and then you know, you know,
one of the benefits of self services you are selling
more goods per day and that helps eliminate the problem
of spoiled food or expired food. And Saunders was aware
(28:24):
of that and he would advertise to people, see this
is what I'm doing. I'm gonna treat you fair. I mean, now,
you can't imagine going in a store not having a
label on it. And this is thirty two cents or whatever.
Can't imagine it, but for you know, the twentieth century,
that was common place. And when once you label everything,
(28:46):
then no grocery store can hide. You know, his competitors
are thinking, oh, you know, you're gonna have to do
something different. You know, he proved right there that first
year that he had about eight or nine stores in
Memphis and Bowers had over four party and he outsold
Bowers stores simply because he made it easier for people's
(29:07):
shop and they just started swarming into this, into bigger wiggles.
You know. He's one of those rare individuals that has
an idea that worked and it transformed part of our society.
I don't say he's as great as Henry Ford, but
you know Ford decided, well, why and why can't we
(29:28):
put an engine in this little carriage and then hook
it up to some wheels, and then we don't need
a horse and bug anymore. We have a car change
the world. No, Saunders isn't of that level of success,
but I think he had the same mind where he thought, well,
let's do something a little different here, you know the
old ways, or yeah, you can do a little faster
(29:49):
a little bit better than that, and then that's what
Pigglulu was. Grocery stores version of the model TV as
interesting as the next year he started franchising, and he
actually filed for several patterns and had several patents. But
he started selling the idea that well, you guys down
(30:13):
in Arkansas and missus m you can build a pig
of You know, there's towns all over the South that
were large enough to support a couple of grocery store
and that proceeded very rapid leagues selling franchises all over
the place. You could argue that the founder of Walmart
the virtually the same thing. He put a Walmart and
(30:33):
the medium sized towns. You know, a town doesn't have
a Walmart, and it's kind of not a town. But
having a store like that in your community, hiring the
local folks to work in the store, probably manage the store.
It built a loyalty for their brand for Walmart still exists.
The difference between Waldon and Saunders is Walton never lost
(30:55):
his business, he held onto it, where I think Saunders
had a lot out of the same attitude's same personality.
In some way, he wanted to be that champion, but
in the end he didn't keep that business long enough.
You know, right now most people don't know who Saunders in.
Saunders achieved a level of celebrity and wealth that must
(31:16):
people owning dream of. He's most famous for. The Pig
Palace is a building I don't know how maybe square feet.
Well they've added on to it, but a majority of
that thirty six thus of square feet is what he built.
And it was to have a swimming pool. He was
(31:37):
to have everything a rich person with the walk. Saunders
tried to outsmart traders of Wall Street, and to explain
it simply, he didn't realize they wrote the rules of trade.
There was no governing agency overseeing financial trade that we
have now. It was whatever certain people who what we
(32:00):
call Wall Street decided to do is what was done.
They made the rules among themselves. I have trouble sometimes
describing a short sell as a stock maneuver, where different
people in the financial business spread rumors at the companies
in trouble, that's stocks of what not worth what it's
(32:23):
listing at now, And Saunders thought that was horrible. Piggily
Weekly had overexpanded and there was a franchise or two
that had gone bankrupt, and that was all the trigger
that these short sellers needed. And he started this campaign
is take the shares out of the hands of these
Wall Street thieves or wolves. And he started a buying
(32:46):
campaign in Memphis, you know, saved Piggy Wiggily for Memphis.
His most people in Memphis or you know, any city
outside of New York probably thought about Wall Street saying
was he dead? And it was sort of a this
kind of a villainous place, and he was playing on that.
You know, no, let these thieves take our figure wiggled
away from us. So everyone invested in the Saunders scheme
(33:08):
to buy all the shares and hold them. Well, he
pushed these these traders into a paddock because whatever they borrow,
they have to pay, and if he's buying all the shares,
they have to come to him to repay what they
owe him. I mean, he was trying to trap them.
(33:29):
And the Border directors of the Stock Exchange in New
York kept Saunders from doing that and let let the
traders off the hook. They could change the rules. See
there's no government agency overseeing stock turning. Whatever the Border
directors thought was legal was illegal, and especially if they
(33:50):
had friends who got caught up in the scheme and begging,
you know, don't let us die out here, that's well,
we'll let Saunders die. You know, they don't know him,
they don't care about him. He's not part of their
social group or anything like that at all. He's just
some hillbilly from Tennessee who thought he knew what he
was doing. They just you know, interpreted rules. So let
(34:11):
him die. So he had borrowed all that money. Instead
of gaining what he thought would be hundreds of millions
of dollars, he had nothing, you know, twelve millions, a
lot of money today to loose. Imagine what it was
like in nineteen twenty three. What Saunders had done, and
there weren't people that really liked him because he was,
(34:32):
you know, come very famous, was that he had begged
Memphis to pull together money to pay off this debt
so Piggy Wiggily could get back to normal operating under
his leadership. And people did. They had rallies or save
Piggy Wiggily from Memphis, And that was a kamnay. Not
(34:55):
for Saunders. He was careful to say, save Piggy Wiggily
from Memphis. And he had a point there too. I mean,
you know, there's a lot of jobs in Memphis now
because of this store, this business, and then he made
the dumb mistake of putting money into this what we
now know is to take palace, which was an extravagant home.
(35:15):
This is you know, and people that invested in Picklewell
must have been shocked. Is what are in the world
are you doing. We're taking time away from our business,
spending our money to bail you out, and you're building
the stupid house. You know you don't have time for
that anymore. How did they find out about it? While
(35:37):
a workman had been injured in the newspaper published a
story you know it Hobly calory. You know, they couldn't
believe it. It was this terrible mistake, you back, and
it cost him well. I mean, he tried to get
in to make money, and he did, but I mean
he's still famous for what I think he wigged and
(35:59):
he lost her in the company of six years. I
guess that the story was markl in itself, is that
he started with one store. Six years later he had
a thousand I mean, you know, I had superstantial chain.
But I mean he was successful. He did build something
(36:21):
that was unique. He just didn't hold on to him.
He would be Sam Walton today, or his memory would
be as big as Sam Walton if he had just
held on into Piggy Whigglely. Like Walton held out into Walmart.
The most fitting memorial to him is the ordinary self
service store. Sam Walton founded Walmart in nineteen sixty two.
(36:45):
By the end of his life in nineteen ninety two,
Walton owned the largest retail merchandising company in the world.
In his autobiography Sam Walton Made in America, he credited
the enormous success it was retail stores to the principle
of self service. His brief description of the benefits that
(37:06):
self service gave to him and his desire to pass
on the savings to his customers seemed to be a
near match to saunders Own words two generations before. During
the past twenty five years, supermarkets and large merchandise stores
have become popular in nearly every country in Europe, Asia,
(37:27):
Latin America, in parts of Africa. In an odd way,
Clarence saunders prophetic slogan for Piggley Wiggly all over the
world has come true and great job on the piece
as always by Greg Hangler, and his special thanks to
Mike Freeman who wrote the book Clarence Saunders and the
Founding of Piggy Wiggly and What a story, and that
(37:48):
he started the idea of pricing and transparency and volume
so that we could lower profits on each individual item
but make up for that with volume, and that is
indeed what Sam Walton. There's no doubt that Sam took
a lot of the ideas of Piggy Wiggly and scaled
them to a much larger operation. The story of Piggley Wiggly,
(38:10):
the story of Clarence Saunders here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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