Sears

Martin Luther once said that a ploughboy, in a close relationship with God, could interpret and do God’s will better than a theologian.  Perhaps that is why there are more Lutheran small-businessmen than in any other denomination.

            Richard Warren Sears was born in 1863 in Stewartville, Minnesota, a rural town near Rochester that is just 5000 people even today.  The family moved to Spring Valley soon thereafter.  His dad was a wagon maker and blacksmith who did well and was on the town council.  But he lost his life savings in a market collapse, died 2 years later, forcing the teenage Richard to go to work for a railroad to help support family.  One day, his rail station had a merchant customer refuse a large order of watches.  Watches were considered a city luxury by farmers.  Richard made a deal to try to sell all those watches.  In six months, the super-salesman had sold every one and signed on a partner, Alvah Roebuck, who repaired watches.  They made money, moved to Chicago, then sold out.  Sears had observed that rural folks will buy only if it is cheap, the same observation of Sam Walton 80 years later.  He and Roebuck went into a mail-order business with Sears writing the catalog copy.  By 1896 it was 140 pages of folksy description.  Sometimes he was too glowing in his product descriptions and it came back to haunt him. “Honesty is the best policy,” he would say.  “I’ve tried it both ways.”

            Sears was targeting the most overworked market segment—farm wives.  His catalog held everything from dishes to clothes to kit houses (1904).  Using the postal system, he allowed them to buy things rarely seen in rural areas.  And by pressuring suppliers, he got prices very low.  And example is the cream separator.  They were typically $100.  Sears found one for $26 that was acceptable and came out with catalog models for $14 and $22.  Within a few years dairymen all over the country, formerly selling only whole milk, were selling cream separately with Sears separators. 

            But organizing and fulfilling orders was problematic.  When Roebuck fell into poor health and sold his share back to Sears (1895), Richard found a venture capitalist in his brother-in-law Rosenwald, who transformed Sears, Roebuck & Co. from a shapeless, inefficient, rapidly expanding corporate mess into the retailing titan of much of the twentieth century. He set up an assembly line to fill sales and a returns department. Richard Sears developed failing health in 1909 and quit his active role in the company.  He died in 1914 at his farm near Milwaukee.  His marketing genius lived on in the company through the 1970s. At its height around WW I, 5 million catalogs of 1200 pages held 100,000 items.  A good example of Sears’ impact was in refrigerators. There were once spring houses farmers dug to keep milk a second day, then ice boxes, but that required ice delivery. In 1918 Kelvinator invented a gas-cycle refrigerator.  Sears began to market it in the 20s and by 1930 was the leading marketer of refrigerators in America.  By the 20s the once rural marketing had turned urban as well with stores. FDR quipped that the way to cure a communist was to hand him a Sears catalog.  But the best indication of how influencial the company became was a story related by a Sunday School teacher.  The kids were asked, “Where did the Ten Commandments come from?” Answer: “From the Sears, Roebuck catalog!”

Queen Victoria's 200th is a big deal

Friday, May 24 was the 200^th birthday of Queen Victoria of The United Kingdom.  Canadians say that Queen Victoria’s B-Day is the day when you can safely put away your coat.  The media quips that she was the longest reigning monarch, but now eclipsed by Elizabeth II.  The real significance of V. was that she was the first Britsh monarch to make the monarchy wholly ceremonial, hence a great tourist draw without the political backlash.  Her mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg was married to George III’s fourth son.  George III was the king who lost USA, then went mad and had a long reign to 1820. His aging sons George and William were terribly unpopular.  George IV was known as Prince of Whales because he was fat and drank to excess, ruled 1820-30.  Then William IV ruled from 1830-37.  He never grew up and was always a adolescent drunk and womanizer. Neither had children. When Edward died, V’s mom, also ‘Victoria’, kept her daughter under close supervision and away from her ‘wicked uncles’.  Victoria was just 8 when she became heir apparent.  If William IV did anything correct it was to pack the House of Lords with forward thinking nobles who wanted to reform British politics so that the House of Commons Members would represent equal numbers of people. (Former landed system divided things weirdly so that some had hardly any constituents and others had industrial cities).  In 1832 it passed.  Duchess Victoria was quite German and her sister was great grandmother of my German great grandmother.   But young Victoria was thoroughly British. Her uncle Leopold became King of the Belgians and he had been sort of a surrogate father to her.  He constantly wrote back home advising her how to become a good queen.  When she did become queen, she put herself under the wing of Lord Melbourne, and amiable and avuncular Whig.  Perhaps because she trusted him, perhaps because the British were so disgusted and sour over her two uncles’ reigns, she began to quiet the monarch’s role in governing, especially war.  Then she fell in love with her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  They married in 1840. He was too German for the Brits, too spendthrift and too intellectual.  Parliament distrusted him.  So the couple retreated from politics even more.  Museums like South Kensington and publicity for charitable and worthy causes were their work instead.  When Europe exploded in revolution 1848 against dictatorial monarchs, Britain was quite content.  Then in 1851Albert conceived a Great Exhibition to show new technology of the machine age.  With Victoria and Albert the lead hosts, the entire exhibition was a spectacular success.

.     Victoria and Albert were a devoted couple and had 9 kids.  V. didn’t like child-rearing and used nannies.  But Albert put the best construction on it with pictures of the royal family around the Christmas tree and other familial photos .  It was a huge hit with the public.  All the while this was going on, wars and politics were in an uproar--Mines Act forbid child labor, a law limiting working hours to 13, Crimean War, Opium Wars with China and Indian Mutiny.  Had Victoria played a part in this, her popularity would have surely shrunk. 

.     When Albert died in 1861, Victoria was only 42, and she wore black-mourning  the rest of her life. She loved Disraeli  and disliked Gladstone, but advised them both.  And under them, England transformed from a colonial power to an empire upon which the sun never sets.  (Perhaps, someone said, God doesn’t  trust an Englishman in the dark.) Victoria became the symbol of this empire trying to rule justly and she was the “Grandmother of Europe.” When she died in 1901 she had begun the ‘century of the common man.’ But her initative to make the monarchy ceremonial and a force for good would live on to influence most of the First Ladies of USA in the 20^th century.  For just as there is a place for the rough-and-tumble of politics, there is also a place for civilization and good-will. So while we celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, realize that the British Commonwealth celebrates the queen who made democracy under constitutional monarchy possible.

Walt Disney

Walt Disney was born in Chicago but the Disneys moved to Marceline, Missouri when he was age 4 where his father farmed with Walt’s uncle.  Two years after Walt started school, they moved again to Kansas City.  The family was poor.  He and brother Roy led a grueling life of paperboys both morning and evening distributing the Kansas City Star and KC Times. There was literally no time for play.  Many of the houses they delivered had rich residents, and one day another boy saw Walt throwing their paper.  He showed Walt his bicycle.  Walt’s eyes grew big and he could only dream of having toys and a bike. He was too painfully shy to talk. The other kid befriended him and began to put out toys near the door so that his chance friend, Walt, could pause for a few seconds and admire the forbidden toys, try one or two, and fantasize.

            Walt and Roy didn’t get very good grades in school because they were tired.  But Walt loved to draw, had a talent for it, and studied art in the upper grades. The family was strictly Protestant and patriotic.   He lied about his age in 1918 and got into the army but the war was over by the time he got to France.  He drove an ambulance. His hastily drawn cartoons were printed in “Stars and Stripes.”  Back home after the war, he got work at a commercial art studio, then at a film animation company.  He started his own studio which promptly went bankrupt like those prior companies.  But he had produced his first film, a 12 minute animation, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.  In 1923, He and Roy moved to Los Angeles, eventually opening up a studio for cartooning.  There they created Mickey Mouse.

            His humble character and unswerving Protestantism (We are Saints and Sinners: Walt chain-smoked and drank) led him to produce not only comedy but moral plays, rich with fantasy. As a child he loved Aesop’s Fables. As a filmmaker, he made delightful anthropomorphic animals.  Employing a separate script department they wrote family-oriented, optimistic screenplays with lessons of life.  And during the hard times of the 1930’s these were keenly accepted.  Mickey Mouse was introduced as Steamboat Willie, a character always getting into a scrape but escaping harm by doing right.  The Three Little Pigs depicted pigs who worked hard in defiance of adversity taunting a Big Bad Wolf (the Depression).  Snow White shows that a true princess’s character is her real beauty as she teams with little people who work diligently. Pinocchio illustrates that lies get you in trouble but truth wins. 

            When labor costs after WW II made cartoon animation expensive, Disney started doing nature documentaries and live action pictures.  Disney recognized the potential of television as well.  But deep down inside Walt was still the kid who’d had no toys but lots of fantasies.  So in 1951 he began plans for a grandiose toy explosion in Disneyland amusement park. Main Street was patterned after his memories of Marceline, Walt’s fascination with trains produced a train that ran through the park.  Disneyland soon became a mecca for tourists from all over the world.  And the lessons-on-life films continued. Lady and the Tramp (sowing your oats is fun but finding a partner, doing your duty bravely even when unappreciated, is the greater joy), Song of the South (even clever people do very stupid things and get stuck, but you can still win), and Bambi (growing up is scary and full of scars, but nobility awaits in real adulthood).  Critics have said that Walt Disney’s films indoctrinated the world with American Protestant values.  Perhaps, but Christianity seems to have a global resonance. Maybe it is an unusual way for Jesus Christ to get a foot in their door. Oh, and don’t forget to be the other kid who shared his toys with the paperboy.  You never know who he might grow up to be.