FIVE AND TEN: The Fabulous Life of F. W. Woolworth

An immensely readable and entertaining life of a man who was the epitome of all the Alger success stories in one. He left an unfinished autobiography and to this Winkler has had access, as well as to other available family material. From the farm, which he hated, through apprenticeship in a village store, he came to the development of his confident assurance that the five cent sale idea was sound. He eventually made his test successively in Utica, Lancaster, Harrisburg, York, Scranton -- he met success and failure, and he built the basic principles of future and sustained progress. For a time he gave all his stores personal supervision, which he reluctantly yielded. By penny pinching, low salaries, corner cutting and cash buying he built his fortune, epitomized in the Woolworth Building and his millionaire associates.