This carefully researched book tells the story of an extraordinary man who never did anything in an ordinary way. One of America's business pioneers, Wanamaker revolutionized the mercantile world with his principles: one price, cash sales, guaranteed merchandise and money-back satisfaction.
He not only built the largest retail store in America by 1890, but he also founded a Sunday School and developed it into America's largest with 5,000 in attendance each Sunday. He was a man of great vision of whom it was said, "He could see further into the future than a great many other men can see into the past."
As Postmaster General of the United States from 1889-1893, he began rural free delivery of the mails, post offices at sea, postal savings, the postal museum, and the issuance of commemorative stamps.
His short-lived political career was a courageous stand for decency, morality and justice at all levels of government.
John Wanamaker: King of Merchants is a delightful and easy-reading examination of Philadelphia's most prominent citizen in 1900, a man who was a dominant influence in the city he loved, where he was born, worked and died at the age of eighty-four.
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