J.C. Penney and the golden rule

J.C. Penney’s CEO Ron Johnson announced in 2012 a dramatic plan to reshape the company’s approach to the retail market. Unlike the previous barrage of nonstop, deeply discounted sale items Johnson planned to stabilize Penney’s stores by offering everyday low prices at 40 percent off the initial price, along with other major changes. 

“Every initiative we pursue will be guided by our core value to treat customers as we would like to be treated, fair and square,” Johnson said.

In President Barack Obama’s state of the union given in 2012 he echoed a similar theme of fairness. “We can restore our economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules. What is at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values but American values. We have to reclaim them.”

Going back to the virtue that led Penney’s and America’s founding the idea of fairness strikes a cord that is missing in many businesses and in Washington, treating others the same way that you want to be treated.

It was this principle that guided James Cash Penney’s creation of “the Golden Rule Store,” a store that revolutionized the treatment of customers and employees and changed the life of its founder as well.

Born the son of a Baptist preacher in 1875 Penney strove to live by the words of Jesus known as the Golden Rule. “So in everything do to others what you would have them do to you.” Matthew 7:12.

Unlike the 99 percent to one percent class warfare rhetoric Penney willingly started as a clerk in a dry goods store and worked his way up to eventually open his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming in 1902.

In Penney’s Golden Rule Store his respect for customers was a rare practice during an avaricious business era that required providing quality goods at affordable prices. Penney honored his employees whom he referred to as “associates” by offering them a share of the profits. His incentivized work force led to a rapid growth in business and by 1929 Penney had expanded the retail chain across the country adding around 1,400 stores.

Penney’s life was not without hardships with the death of his first wife in 1910 and his second wife in 1923. Then came the stock market crash in 1929 which caused him to lose almost everything that he had and led him to experience what he later called a “dark night of the soul.”

He entered the Kellogg Sanitarium at the advice of a close friend and it was there that Penney’s life changed forever. One morning after breakfast he heard a familiar hymn coming from a small nearby chapel. “Be not dismayed whatever betides, God will take care of you. All you may need He will provide, God will take care of you.”

“At that time something happened to me which I have never been able to explain or describe. It was a life changing miracle and I have been a different man every since,” he said.

Orlando Tibbitts in his story “The Spiritual Journey of J.C. Penney” chronicles Penney’s transformation into a life of true hope and purpose. While Penney later regained his wealth more importantly his renewed faith in Christ led to his recommitment to serving others.

As Penney shared with students, “The secret of my father’s life and my mother’s life was the way they imitated the Master by giving of themselves with selflessness and sacrifice. They never separated the secular from the sacred. As God motivates people they received blessings no money could buy and they left blessings upon all the people whom they touched.