He steered him towards a career in retail and lined up an internship for j. C. Junior and he started understanding retail from those experiences. Thats where he cut his teeth. He had agricultural projects but his plan was to work his way up the store. Is father died from t. B. And j. C. Was at risk of that. His initial move was to come out west to denver of all places and started as a sales clerk in what was called a department store, one of the Main Department stores that has been taken over by dillards. He had the opportunity to use his savings and buy his own butcher shop north of denver. He wasnt happy in a big city and moved. And he had deep religious values that forbade him from drinking. His dad had a big influence. He didnt realize that his greatest clients were the local hotel and chef that was there but the chef expected a bolt of whiskey with every order of meat. J. C. Provided the bolt of whiskey and felt guilty and decided im not going to do it anymore and lost the business of the hotel in the process and the entire meat shop. He was completely broke. He had noticed that across the street was a Golden Rule Store and intrigued by it and he went inside and understood it in retail and got to know the propertyor of that store who came out from missouri. And at the time he was doing something unusual, the idea of having six stores, a Chain Department store. And that intrigued penny and he talked his way into being hired with the idea that he would be let go after the holiday season. This Thomas Callaghan gave him the opportunity to be a clerk in wyoming in the western part of the state and if he worked out as a sales clerk he would give him the opportunity to manage his own store. So thats initially what drew him to wyoming. Whats the title of your book and why did you decide to write it . J. C. Penny, the man and the tore and Rural America was a part of my childhood in my earlier years and it was a part of j. C. Penney and j. C. Penney stores as well. This became an academic interest the more i understood and most people hadnt known about it. That is what made that book come about the way it did. His Business Model is similar to what the golden rule merchants started. He didnt own that store on his own, his mentor and another mentor. What is different, they were partnerships, so an employee that came to work and penney called his employees associates, they had the opportunity for viable ownership and to some day manage a store but own a part of it and share in the profits. That is unusual how he started. His father was a huge influence on him in terms of moral convictions and values which penney transferred into his approach to business. Even though the initial syndicate was called the golden rule, it drew him to this religious idea of do to others as you would have done unto you. I wanted to apply that between the store and its customers and the employer and the potential employees or associates that came to work for him and taking a step beyond that as well as their own competitors and suppliers. That is what his goal ms. Wasserman schultz to practice the golden rule in every facet of that operation. When you look to his partnership, it goes back to the golden rule idea. It wasnt about him making money and that was the end of it, he wanted to share that success with anybody who got involved with him. And in the agricultural partnerships that began at the worst time of his life when he had lost his fortune, he was using that same incentive to partner with common farmers. They would have been stuck working with wages on farms they would have never opened or generated enough income to own their own farms. Penney saw an opportunity with the rural partnerships that he could do a solid for the tenant farmer by giving them an opportunity to have a better farm than they were working as ten apartment farmers and have the incentive of partnerships. One of the first one was with orin james. When he came back, he was a well known person nationwide and living in new york city at the time he was setting up partnerships. But he would walk up to the shack or farm house that this person was in, knock on the door and introduce himself at j. C. Penney and present this opportunity and who could say no. But it is surreal when we think about that today when we think about zuckerberg or bezos and offer an opportunity. But he continued doing that really through the 1930s, 1940s and the last of these partnerships were finally dissolved in the late 1960s because his wife thought he was spreading himself too thin between new york city and missouri. There were 108 different partnerships that were set up and they were substantial and changed the lives of the people that got involved with him. In the book, one of the later chapters is the Successful Partnership with two brothers in North Central missouri and they were able not only to buy the farms out from j. C. Penney and keep the families on those farms today. And they have family farms that are chased back to j. C. Penney. Do you talk about the struggles of the store today and what it has gone through in the past few decades . I do. And its sort of thank goodness my parents prohibited me from owning j. C. Penney stock and has turned out to be good. And he would be heart broken seeing what happened to the company. We cant blame it on the rise of ecommerce but deviating from the values. He had a Mission Statement called the penney idea. And it was basically seven principles that were rooted in the golden rule that he wanted the company to operate by. He only had 30 stores. Within 15 years he would be approaching 1,400. The company drifted away from those ideas and values and found itself where it is. If you are not treating the employees the way you want to be treated or treating your customers or responding to what your customers want or not, you are going to be irrelevant and i think thats part of the problem. What do you hope people take away from reading this book . I want them to see an unusual approach to capitalism. Capitalism gets sort of a bad name. And i think j. C. Pensey brand of that is where you could have winwin situations rather than somebody making a profit and lowering the standard of living for everybody they made that off. He kept an awareness of everything around him and the idea of what he can do to make that environment and saw that company and his wealth as a eans which he could do that. Our visit to laramie continues as we hear from an author that the university of wyoming. I looked at very carefully and sometimes very harshly by the industry in this state. And so what brought about my project was a piece of outdoor art work and art installation by anditish artist chris drury in this low point, he constructed an outdoor of spiral of logs 36 feet across, a spiral of logs with coal swirling down to a pile of coal and he wanted this piece, which he called carbon sink to remind people of their come policity in the death of our own forests. Pine beetle outbrooke was caused by warm winters. Warm winters, they arent killed and wiping out phenomenal number of trees. And karma. We were extracting the coal and money putting the co2 in the atmosphere and warmer winters and the beetles were wiping out our forest. The feedback of what we were doing. But as you might begin, it was also in a sense critical of the burning of fossil fuels and outraged that industry. The artwork was installed in 2011 in the summer and generated the state politicians were rushing to condemn without having to see it and insult to the Energy Industry in the state and demanded its removal in may of the following year and disappeared. Nstead of the spiral log spiral. Asked. Ions thats when i became interested well what did happen to it. Online te a piece in an publication called wildfire which is our deep journalism kind of sorts and called into question the veer asity. That led to another piece and and tv r public radio newspapers. And the whole story broke that the university had buckled under pressure from politicians and the Energy Industry and destroyed the art work in order to play indicate the fossil fuel industry. That story was picked up. It was a classic case of sensorship by industry, by corporate america. So i thought i was done with that. It was a terrible, a horrific case of sensorship on the University Campus and people started sending me stories, did you hear what happened here . And what happened on the other side of your own campus and a lot of these people wanted their stories to be told but feared retribution, financial and physical retribution and knew that i told one story and i feel as a tenured faculty member at the university it was my job and my duty and thats why we have the protection of tenures and say things with protection that other people and i understand that other people in our society cant say. The book came together as a set of stories and it shows this pattern of silencing and crens soaring the arts. Wyoming is not unique. We are a tragic model of what happens with power and money with regard to speech and politics. So at a National Level, probably one of the great disasters in terms of our democracy is the Citizens United is money is speech and corporations are people. What we see at a National Level interminggling of corporations and Public Institutions and we see it on our campus. This is a little version. Tell people, we could blame corporations for eing terrible citizens, but we created them. They are not a naturally occurring and gave them one responsibility and that is fiduciary. We created them to make money and they are very good at that. But when we did that, we should also recognize its the role of the government to then regulate this creation that we have come up with called the corporation. That would work very well called the balance of power. When they are not capable of shaping and in some cases electing the people whose responsibility it is to regulate them in the interest of the people, now the system has broken down because we dont have regulateors acting in our interests but those in the interests of those they are upposed to be regulated. The book is billion free speech and the ability to speak the truth to the public. In wyoming, because the power lies in the republican power and the wealth lies in the Energy Industry, they are the authors of sensorship. Some of. Micro come and if it was run by democrats and red cross, im pretty sure they would be anxious to have criticism. s about power and but our concern as citizens needs to be about the capacity to speak truth to power whether that powers lies in liberal or conservative hands or the Energy Industry or wind industry who would be as bit happy to criticize or sigh leps. We see that on university. Censorship is coming from the left and the right and every bit as fierce and every bit asthmalicious coming from the left side of the political spectrum as it is from the right. I find both directions of the common grab of power off the ability of people to speak to be a tremendous danger to our democracy wherever it comes from politically. The cspan cities tour visited historic sites. We go to a mansion that belonged to edward ivanson. We are at the mansion that edward built in 1892 and the home of the museum and been restored because for 10 years it was vacant and people broke in and vandalized the building and been a very long and fruitful effort to make it into this seum that highlights the ivinson family and highlights. Edward was born on the island of st. Croix down in the caribbean and he lived there for seven years. D his father managed a sugar contain and while he was there he met a young woman. They ran away to new jersey to get married and like a lot of folks moved west and wound up in laramie, wyoming. The family has been living in memphis tennessee and the way he thought he could get to california, he had a dry goods store and sold all the stuff and got fraggete cars and as the Union Pacific was built across the demrate plains. The railroad stopped construction in the winter of 1867. Edward lirps through some source that the Union Pacific railroad is going to have a facility in what would become laramie, wyoming. He came over here in february of 1868, built a log building in what is downtown laramie and started selling things to member. The railroad arrived in may along with his wife and adopted daughter. They ran the dry goods store and starts his banking career and eventually well, let me say this as well. He was an astute merchant. His bank, he made a lot of money and he was criticized. High Interest Rates out of the bank. Foreclosed mortgages at the drop of a hat. But the good news, when he turned 80 years old, he give his money away and came back to our town. The year after his wife died back in 1816 and gave 50,000 cash and four city lots which paid for the complete construction of our first real hospital. 1919, he gave a bunch of property to the church. 1924, he built our world war i memorial. 1925, he gave 1. 5 million in cash to friends, family and former employees. The remapeder of his estate would go to into a trust fund which would be used to build a fabulous building for elderly ladies. And when he died, it was 500,000 in his estate, and built a beautiful facility. 28 suites for Single Ladies and there was no charge for room or board and because he built a hospital, the ladies got free hospital care. Its a wonderful facility. Despite being criticized earlier for his lifestyle, it came back to us in laramie and we are still experiencing the benefits from edwards life as a banker and proud that he decided at age 80 to do what was right. If it wasnt for the Union Pacific, laramie probably wouldnt be here. Gave all this west in the pacific to the one square mile. We opened the front door and we have a little thing that i like to do. We have the door nobody on the original front door which is a brass heavy door nobody. And came to us in a box in the mail maybe knife years ago with a note who said i was a student at the university of wyoming and i stole the door nobody and i take them into the foyer and our first important stop is to his drawing room where the intention was, he would formal entertainment. And i go into the smoking room and i draw the contrast between very nice and somber smoking room. And the dining room is very nice. And we have nice art that sons and o the ivin they have oyster plates. Beautiful stemware. We have a punch bowl that was given to their soninlaw who ran his bank for a while in san diego and change to the five formal rooms into the working part of the mansion and easy to draw the contrast. We have this will beautiful hard wood and we have pine and linoleum on the floor and go upstairs into the bedrooms which are quite large. Not unusual for houses this size in the 1890s and the master bathroom, where we have this really cool 1892 schauer that 1892, so maybe 8,000 and thats really cool. Its a walkin schauer. Its built out of brass. Nickelplated and has a schauer head. And schauer head on other side and looks like a cage. But all the tubes have tiny holes in them and you dont have to turn around to take a schauer. Had a person say its like going into a car wash. We are in the library and the book cases in here were put in by the boarding school because the girls would use this as a study hall. They went to public school. And i like to point out we have one piece of furniture that elonged to edward ivinson. And there are several examples that we learn from visitors. Because we get some really amazing people that talk about the elegant woodwork in the house and all different type of wood that edward had it installed and 1892 pocket doors in the mansion. I had a guy come through three years eeg who closed up his Custom Woodworking business in montana and i said i could build it for you for 7,000. Those are fun to learn as you give tours. His whole life is a fascinating story. Born on a plantation on st. Croix and ends up in new york with no money. We know we got a letter and said he is without a position. He ends up in laramie, wyoming. Amasses in 1870 and this fortune. I think its fair to say he was a critical part of the evolution of laramie from 1868 through 1928 when he finally passed away. For both jane and edward, what i want people to walk away from which cost a awful lot of money to build, the money made some of the people of laramie in not the best way, that when they leave, they understand what they did for our community, whether it was janes early actions with the school and church and suffrage act and the philanthropy that resulted in great things for our community. I would like you to walk away from this. You can see fancy homes and this one is an elegant fancy home but people need to understand that making his money from or off of the community, that money came back to us. Thats what i see. Thats what i hope they walk away with. The cranch span cities tour is exploring the american story. We take book tv and American History tv on the road to watch videos. Cspan. Org citiestour and follow us on tour. Continue our feature on laramie with the author and her book women on the north american plain. People have one view of the great plains pretty much and it is the stalwart, pioneer woman and husband and kids crossing the plains. But thats only a very small piece of the plains history. En we decided to edit this book, what we wanted to take an expansive look and go back to precontact wrm americans entered the point and come up to the present. The diversity of experiences of women in this region is enormous and focusing on that pioneer experience is somewhat limiting. Can you give me an idea of hat makes up the great plains . The mass of the great plains at the university of nebraska constructed. Wonderful book he edited called the great plains. And he took 50 different sketches of people had of the great plains and overlaid them on one another and looks like a kind garthner with a huge magic marker going over the map of the United States and came up with a isp definition and goes into albert ta and follows the Missouri River on the east side and Rocky Mountains and goes own to northern part of texas. Using Walter Pres