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Walton viewed all these arguments as utter foolishness. He had been a small-town merchant. And he had seen the future. He had chosen to eat rather than be eaten. And anyway, he believed that small-town merchants could compete--if they would make major changes to adapt. As it turned out, of course, the consumer voted heavily with Walton. He gave America what it really wanted--low prices every day.
There is no argument offered here that Sam Walton didn't clutter the landscape of the American countryside or that he didn't force a lot of people to change the way they made a living. But he merely hastened such changes. The forces of progress he represented were inevitable. His empowering management techniques were copied by businesses far beyond his own industry; his harnessing of information technology to cut costs quickly traveled upstream to all kinds of companies; and his pioneering retailing concepts paved the way for a new breed of "category killer" retailer--the Home Depots, Barnes & Nobles and Blockbusters of the world. This wave of low-overhead, low-inventory selling continues to accelerate. The Internet, in fact, is its latest iteration. One can only wonder what a young cyber Sam would set out to accomplish if he were just getting started.
John Huey, managing editor of FORTUNE, co-wrote Sam Walton: Made in America