Penney's first stores did not bear his name but were called The Golden Rule stores. He bought his first in the small mining community of Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 1902. There he competed for customers with 21 saloons.

In the midst of the Great Depression, one of America's leading businessmen sank into a personal depression of his own. Now in his fifties, James Cash Penney had already built an empire of dry goods stores, dedicated to following the Golden Rule as a basic commercial principle. But when the economy caved in during the 1930s, Penney lost nearly everything--including his health.

I have found that unselfishness pays because it tends to engender unselfishness. --J. C. Penney

His parents had instilled in him a basic Christian faith that had given him the principles on which he had based his life and his business, yet now that faith was being tested. "I was at the end of my rope," he said later. "My business had crumbled, my communications with colleagues had faltered, and even my . . . wife and our children were estranged from me. It was all my fault." He was even contemplating suicide.

An old friend convinced him to enter a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. The rest and medical attention did him good, but there was another event that restored him spiritually. One morning he awoke too early for breakfast and was wandering the corridors when he heard a hymn he remembered from childhood.

Be not dismayed whate'er betide,
God will take care of you
All you need he will provide
God will take care of you

Following the sound, he stumbled upon a chapel filled with worshiping doctors and nurses. Someone read a Scripture passage: "Come unto me all you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." It was a moment of clarity for the hard-working entrepreneur. He had been striving all his life to honor God with his business, but now it was time to rest in the Lord's grace. "At that time something happened to me which I cannot explain," he said later. "It was a life-changing miracle, and I've been a different person ever since. I saw God in his glory and planned to be baptized and to join a church."

Over the next twelve hours, he experienced a kind of conversion. "Suddenly needing to be heard, I cried inwardly, 'Lord, will you take care of me? I can do nothing for myself!' . . . I felt I was passing out of darkness into light." The words "only believe" came to him. It was no longer about his own efforts, but God's. "In the midst of failure to believe, I was being helped back to believing."

Humble Beginnings
James Cash Penney (yes, that was his full name) learned about faith and business from his father, who served as the pastor of a small Primitive Baptist church in Hamilton, Missouri, and struggled to make a living off the family farm. At age 8, young Jim was told he would have to start buying his own clothes and earning his own money. Life was tough, his father said, and success only came through hard work and long hours. But things would turn out all right, he was told, if he just followed the Golden Rule, treating others with fairness and respect.

But things weren't working out so well for the elder Penney. He strongly urged his church to start a Sunday school, and that was an unpopular position there. As a result, the church dismissed him. That experience soured young Jim on the organized church. His faith would remain a personal thing most of his life.

As a teenager, J. C. Penney worked on surrounding farms growing watermelons and feeding pigs. Shortly after Jim graduated from high school, his father, dying of tuberculosis, asked a friend to give his boy a steady job. So J. M. Hale, who owned a dry goods store in Hamilton, agreed to hire Jim at a salary of $2.27 a month. The young man worked hard as a clerk and learned all he could about the business. He seemed to have a knack for merchandising. Within two years, his pay increased twelve-fold.