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...