Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Jan. 30, 1989, issue of Fortune.
Most of the things you’ve heard about Sam Walton, America’s billionaire cotton-sock retailing baron, are true enough—as far as they go. He is rich and homespun and self-made and plain-spoken; he insists you call him Sam. He is a quail-hunting fanatic, and he drives a ten-year-old Ford pickup with cages in back for Leroy and Kate, successors to the late Ol’ Roy, his favorite bird dog—now enshrined on the label of Wal-Mart dog food. He is one of the world’s great stump speakers, putting all but the best evangelists to shame when it comes to delivering a message to his “associates,” the term he long ago substituted for “employees.” What hasn’t yet come through loudly or clearly enough from his lair in Bentonville, Arkansas, however, is just how serious a place this 70-year-old curiosity and his company are likely to hold in the history of American commerce.
