The Sunday School Man Who Built an Empire

In 1858, twenty-year-old John Wanamaker gathered a handful of children in a vacant lot in Philadelphia and started a Sunday school class. He had no wealth, no connections — just a reverent fear of the Almighty and a stubborn conviction that generosity was the only life worth living.

Within a decade, his Bethany Sunday School grew to over four thousand members, the largest in the nation. Simultaneously, Wanamaker opened his first clothing store, and then transformed a former railroad depot into one of America's first department stores. He pioneered the money-back guarantee and the price tag — radical acts of fairness in an era when haggling rewarded the dishonest. He conducted his affairs, as the psalmist says, with justice.

When financial panics struck — and they struck often in the Gilded Age — Wanamaker refused to lay off workers or cut charitable giving. His heart was steadfast. He tithed relentlessly, funded missionaries across three continents, and opened his store's Grand Court for public concerts free of charge.

His children carried the business forward. His grandchildren carried the faith forward. The wealth in his house was never hoarded; it flowed outward like a river finding the sea.