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Show l : -V 1 ' . I ; j !J. C. PENNY RECALLS PAST Was H Luck? Ask James J Cash Penney about his, phenomenal rise from a dry goods clerk at $2.27 a month to the j chairmanship of the board of the J. C. Penney Company, which last year did a business of $178,-790,900. $178,-790,900. He'll tell you it was hard work and saving. ' "I know that it was luck," he said recently. "I distinguish between luck and opportunity. Yet I realize that hard work alone is not enough to make a man successful. Many men have worked hard and conscientiously and still failed to achieve business busi-ness success because they lacked vision, singleness of purpose and the cooperation of others. i "Trust in hard work" is an oft-repeated precept of Mr. Pen-ney's. Pen-ney's. "My whole life has been given to the selection and training train-ing of young men and women," he said. "I believe it the duty of older people to share experience with them. I wish I knew how to make them understand what I mean when I tell them to put their trust in hard work." Mr. Penney's first job was as salesman in a dry goods store in Hamilton, Mo., where he received re-ceived $25 for a trial period of eleven months. The second year he w&s paid $200. As the third year approached his health failed and he was ordered West by his doctor. In Denver, the best job he could find paid him six dollars dol-lars a week. Soon afterward he started his first independent business venture by opening a butcher shop in Longmont, Colorado. Colo-rado. Because he refused to bribe the chef of the local hotel with a pint of whiskey a week, he lost the hotel trade, and since the hotel furnished most of the business in the town, he soon afterward lost the butcher shop. He went to work for Mr. T. M. Callahan in the local dry goods store and it was here that the idea of building up a system of stores first took shape. Mr. Callahan Cal-lahan and his partner, Mr. Johnson, John-son, were at that time engaged in creating the first partnership system of dry goods stores, and young Penney had the vision to see that this partnership idea had unlimited possibilities. ' He accepted a one-third interest in a store which he and Mr. Callahan Calla-han and Mr. Johnson opened in Kemmerer, Wyoming and shortly afterward, when Mr. Callahan and Mr. Johnson decided to separate, Mr. Penny bought a full interest in the stores they had operated at Kemmerer, Rock Springs and Cumberland. These three stores were the nucleus of the present nation-wide organization. Today, 32 years later, nearly, 1,500 department de-partment stores bear the name of J. C. Penney. This month, the 32nd Anniversary Anni-versary of the Penney Company is being celebrated in nearly 1500 stores from Coast to Coast. |