Biography of J. C. Penney

Name: J. C. Penney
Birth Date: September 16, 1875
Death Date: February 12, 1971
Place of Birth: Hamilton, Missouri, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: executive, philanthropist

J. C. Penney

Chain store executive, pioneer in profit sharing, and philanthropist, J(ames) C(ash) Penney (1875-1971) built a corporate empire following business precepts based on the Golden Rule.The seventh of 12 children, only six of whom grew to maturity, J. C. Penney was born on September 16, 1875, on his father's farm near Hamilton, Missouri. His father, the Reverend James Cash Penney, Sr., served as an unpaid preacher for a fundamentalist sect known as Primitive Baptists and farmed to earn a living. His mother, Mary Frances Paxton Penney, was a Kentuckian. Life was joyless and difficult for the family, and at the age of eight young Penney was told that he had to buy his own clothes. This was not primarily because of necessity, but rather to teach him the value of money and self-reliance. To earn money he purchased a pig, fattened it, and sold it for a profit, then bought others. Later …showed first 150 words…

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…showed last 150 words…soon regained control of his "empire." In his later years he reflected: "I believe in adherence to the Golden Rule, faith in God and the country. If I were a young man again, those would be my cardinal principles." Associated Organizations Further Reading Penney was the author of several books about his life, including J. C. Penney: The Man With a Thousand Partners (1931), Fifty Years With The Golden Rule (1950), Lines of a Layman (1956), and View from the Ninth Decade (1960). Biographies include J. C. Penney, Merchant Prince by Beatrice Plumb (1963) and Norman Beasley's Main Street Merchant (1948). Webster's American Biographies (1974) also includes information on Penney. Articles appear in TIME (June 20, 1949), FORTUNE (September 1950), LIFE (May 14, 1951, and October 3, 1955), Newsweek (September 19, 1960), and the Rotarian (May 1953). His obituary appeared in the New York Times on February 13, 1971.Curry, Mary E. (Mary Elizabeth), Creating an American institution: the merchandising genius of J.C. Penney, New York: Garland Pub., 1993.

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