The Rise and Fall of The Piggly Wiggly Founder and the Mansion Built on Groceries and War
In 1916, a poor farm boy from Virginia named Clarence Saunders opened the first Piggly Wiggly in Memphis and quietly invented the modern self service supermarket the whole world still uses today. Flush with a fortune, he began raising a mansion of pink Georgia marble, the house Memphis would call the Pink Palace, even as he set out to do something no grocer had ever dared, to corner the stock of his own company and break the bears of Wall Street. For one stunning morning in 1923 it looked like he had won, until the New York Stock Exchange changed the rules mid fight and left him buried in debt, stripped of his company, and forced to surrender the palace he never spent a single night in. This is the rise and fall of Clarence Saunders, the eccentric genius who built an empire on nickels and pride, lost it all twice, and died still chasing the store of the future. Public Domain Photos from: Library of Congress Wikimedia Commons (Non-restricted) Copyright Disclaimers • We use images and content in accordance with the YouTube Fair Use copyright guidelines • Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act states: “Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” #clarencesaunders #pigglywiggly
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