Walmart is a parasite feeding on the poor. A business made to enrich a small number of people while relying on the subsidies of food stamps and welfare for its underpaid workers.
32
26 churches?
30
Edna raises her head after a 36 year coma and sighs, sensing the remnants of her soul.
18
Good riddance.
12
apartment buildings and bus service to Houston and the other Wal-Mart's. Houston's going underwater in 20 years along with the petroleum and chemical plants. Get ahead of the curve and the speculators. Finish the railroad.
12
Ah yes, Edna, Texas, now rid of WalMart. I hope someone will do a documentary film about this as WalMart has many towns in America devastated. Also, in interest of Americana, the film might make room for Edna's favorite daughter, Juanita Slusher, aka Candy Barr, the nationally known strip tease artiste of the 50's and 60's who made newspaper headlines often.
11
Think what Andrew Yang's policy of $1000 a month for every citizen in this town over the age of 18 (stacking on top of Social Security) would accomplish. How many home based businesses repairing cars, cutting hair, small bakeries and shops would start up? How well the local churches would do in the Sunday basket? How much extra money people would have for co-pays to entice a physician to set up shop, or a local graduate to come back home? 5000 adults in that town would mean an extra $5,000,000 a month right into the local economy.
I *know* every resident of Edna is going to read this article, even if they otherwise don't read the New York Times. Please research Andrew Yang and consider voting for him; he's a good Christian man with a beautiful family and over 160 policy initiatives to actually make small towns and large alike thrive. Yang2020.com/policies/
27
I understand that Walmart's prices are low only until they drive out the competition. That's why you don't see national prices advertised. Sneaky devils. Where is Teddy Roosevelt the trust buster when we need him.
This is a heartwarming story about life after Walmart.
12
I live quite close to here and I think this article is silly. When I put in Edna and the Walmart into Google Maps, I found that it is only a 20 minute drive away. That’s not outrageous or ridiculous in any way. I’m sorry for the people that lost their job, but the people that shop at Walmart in Edna will survive.
7
God did it, said the pastor. Did residents help a bit to this success story?
6
From Sam Walton and Walmart to Jeff Bezos and Amazon to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook the new gilded age robber baron malefactors of great wealth make the Rockefeller and Ford and Morgan seem like microbes.
20
I marvel at the durability of Marx’s critique of capital. There is very little about this story that a Marxist couldn’t have predicted when Sam Walton rolled into town all those years ago.
11
Curious how when you take the apex predator away that nature quickly comes back....
17
The article was interesting enough but I detest the so-obviously-posed photos of people which I presume are meant to add weight to the story. They just look ridiculous and are distracting.
7
Remember the time when Walmart was critcized for closing down the Mom and Pops? Time for the Mom and Pops to come back.
5
Sad scenario small town residents defining mores/folkways meaning pathetically pining over departing “superstore”.
3
To read a story in the New York Times about Texas and not see Trump critically mentioned once is unbelievable. This Christmas "spirit" creeps me out sometimes.
2
Too many churches for a town of that size.
11
Be grateful it is gone.
The Walmart family as a group are really terrible people. They not only sell a lot of substandard merchandise, they are one of the greediest and most hoarding families in the world.
The exact opposite of these people in Edna.
6
My husband and I have driven down I-59 from Houston to Corpus Christi many a time. He never fails to tell me this old joke when we get near Louise:
Where did you spend the night last night?
Between Edna and Louise.
9
“And with several Supercenters within roughly 25 miles...”
Ex-actly. 25 miles is essentially crosstown in much of America, this was a no-brainer business decision for any organization. Of course the town “survived.” The vast majority of Edna-sized cities have never had a Wal-Mart, and never will. But this article is a nice Yuletide present for the NYT core readership. Proof that America doesn’t need plutocratic, non-union Wal-Mart. Yay.
2
26 churches? for a population of 5700? doesn't that sound a bit out of whack in it's own right?
12
CARTER JOHNSTON, love your photo!!!!!!!!!
1
Wow, 26 churches.
6
The poor Americans can take heart from US flags flying everywhere and know that they belong to the in-group of the mightiest country on earth. The light of patriotism and rejection of immoralities like abortion and homosexuality should be enough to fill the plates of the poor this Christmas season. It matters little if they cannot afford drugs or electricity, or if they homes are mortgaged by hospitals. The greatest ideal on earth is patriotism and the ability to carry guns to defend it.
9
What a wonderful store Walmart is. They did such a good job catering to the town’s needs at a good price,.
Shame the town was just too small, but lots of other places are still benefitting from these fantastic megastores.
4
How does a town support 26 churches with a pop of approx 5,700!
13
Ah, but the residents have all the cheap plastic household goods you could ask for.
And Edna will have them in 5,000 years....
Um, y' know, folks, if you had maybe 6 or 8 churches instead of 26, you could do a bunch more for foreign and local missions. jus' sayin'
14
@L osservatore
really ? didja have to ?
1
Wal-Mart demanded certain financial assistance in our small town, some roadway alterations, etc. I asked the mayor why our taxpayers had to help Wal-Mart build? We weren’t offering our local small shops any assistance like that. He said, “They’ve got you. If you don’t help them out within city limits, they will build just outside of town. Of course everyone will still shop there, but our city won’t get the tax revenue.”
I talked to the owner of the hardware store, where I still shop. She said Wal-Mart really squeezes its suppliers to keep the prices down. There may be some small reduction in quality that’s hard to recognize until after you buy. Shop local. You get so much more in return.
All those little things that make your town special—the local newspaper, the family-run businesses, the churches that put on Christmas cantatas, the softball leagues—only happen if you support them.
26
The bigger story in all of these trends is that we are “over-retailed”. In any suburb there are huge strip malls with the same collection of super centers every couple of miles. Not all of these stores can possibly survive unless they manage to convince us to buy ever increasing quantities of “stuff”. Why by one pen when you can by twenty? Why by one small drink when you can supersize it for twenty cents more? Consumers are starting to realize that the most economical and sustainable thing you can do is just not buy new stuff. That is why the stores that expanded massively over the past 30 years are now consolidating. There’s just to much junk to buy and no one needs to buy it.
13
I'm really proud. A friend of mine and I single handedly slowed the arrival of a Supercenter near here by one month. Its a major win fighting against such a retailer. It is a shame Americans have to lose local identity to that force to learn how to get it back. The strategy used by local planners is that they can't deny individual business property buyers from doing what they want. One can go in any direction from this city and see abandoned big box that have only sprouted weeds. Just like subdivision residents that shout at farms converting to new subdivisions, we fail to see we reap what we sow. When we realize quality is the best economy, stores like this will fail because they support only their bottom line, not the society that made them function. If more Americans knew how this business treats suppliers with returns that cost not the store but the supplier and management that is relocated not for family but for corporate choice, the parking lots would be asphalt prairies. If Sears can fail, so will Walmart, so can Amazon. Small business always grows back.
8
My parents live in small town in NY that kept Walmart out. It still has a thriving business district, with movie theater, shops, restaurants, etc., AND a real sense of community.
As for places like Edna - live by the plastic sword made in China, die by the plastic sword made in China.
14
The Guardian reported about this a year or so ago. For the past years, Walmart has been closing stores all over the country leaving all communities without much of an infrastructure. When it came it destroyed the local stores but provided some jobs, although most of them low paying jobs. The only gain was that people could buy a lot of the junk even cheaper than before. It is no surprise to me that Walmart failed establishing itself in urban areas as it seeks predominantly cheap and low quality stuff.
7
I think 18 months is a little premature to say "everything is fine" and there wasn't economic impact. Towns and cities operate to the effect of decades, not months, and this really needs to be looked at through that lens. Time will tell what impact this will have on the community.
And while it is heartwarming to see all these local businesses come in and try to pick up the slack of the closed store, I am curious how it affected overall prices, which the article failed to say. Buying local, while something I'd love, isn't exactly cheap. During these past holidays, pretty much everything I was able to find in cute boutique stores in my neighborhood that proudly held "buy local" signs in their windows I could find online for 20% cheaper, even accounting for those instances where I was paying shipping. Not knowing the average income there, I can't speculate how it altered the percentage of people's paychecks going towards retail. I know in a city, many times local isn't viable.
And all that said, knowing the readership and the tendencies of the writers of the Times, I really wasn't expecting anything super positive in an article about a major retailer/corporation. Not to say I hold any immense love of Walmart, but I'd hazard a guess that I'd see a radically different take on this if I was reading the WSJ. Just food for thought and a healthy dose of skepticism.
3
Chances are very good that the fellow who quit unloading trucks for Walmart and now assembles equipment at a Caterpillar plant at least doubled his wages. Good for him.
9
Mr. Corkery has done a fabulous job here. Edna is like the small towns I grew up around and lived for 40 years of my life. It's an icon and a template; its story similar to that of many other American communities. Rather than despair, Mr. Corkery showed there is hope. When combined with American home-grown ingenuity, the future remains promising for small-town America as it adapts to the 21st Century. Thank you for publishing this; this is the type of story that keeps me a New York Times subscriber — I don't come here for the boring political football game coverage.
3
Might be biased, but if you want to see an even more ruthlessly efficient business than Walmart, look no further than Amazon. Be careful of jumping out of the pot and into the fire.
Also just from what I've heard, Walmart isn't "moving on" from the heartland, but times are getting tougher for Walmart, and essentially all attempts to grow the business into urban regions have failed. Thus they are battening the hatches and consolidating where they are strong.
7
Thanks for changing the title of this article. I sent it to Dame Edna -- she's retired, but if she gets back on the boards, I think this theater would welcome her with open arms.
1
This Walmart store opened for business in 1982. In those day city councils were under no obligation to give Walmart a break on property taxes. That has changed. Small town councils and mayors will give Walmart a ten-year moratorium on property tax to attract a supercenter to their community. This has happened all over the state of small-town Missouri. Then when the allotted time expires, typically ten years, small-town governments extend the favor to another ten years. Local residential property owners make up the difference. It is difficult to say whether or not sales tax generated by Walmart makes up the difference though I am certain there are studies that reveal a mixed bag of tax revenue losses and gains.
7
Thanks so much for adding a little "grey" to what I understood was a Walmart "foregone conclusion." My wife and I try and purchase as much as possible where we live. And appreciate being on a "first name basis," and even keeping up with the lives of the families of the employees of our local grocery store, which hasn't and may never be the case at our nearest Walmart - a 30-minute bus ride followed by a 15-minute ride in a "direct" taxi. But, I couldn't help but wonder about your mention of the "man-made lake" and "rice fields." I wonder if the town's close proximity to Houston makes what will probably be the real "bomb" - the effects of climate change - difficult to discuss, much less take steps to mitigate.
4
When Wal Mart comes to small/medium size towns legions of small businesses close up shop. Locals ignore that most employees at Wal Mart are part timers w/o significant benefits.
As the nation’s largest employer Wal Mart is a major factor in reducing the fortunes of our small business community. Wal Mart does have a major fleet of ocean freighters. And in China Wal Mart is a “lovely name”. Sigh.
4
I'm sorry, but if a Walmart was a point of civic pride, it may be time to think about moving.
19
The endless cycle of corporate greed with it's impersonal personality that affects those that generate the profits by buying their products. Hopefully the short term pain and damage will be replaced, as suggested, by the benefits of local ownership of businesses. Unrestrained capitalism demands unrestrained competition and is good and bad but it's the American way and responsible for our position in the world while at the same time being the source of harm to citizens. Once again we need our business leaders to follow a more ethical and moral code not taught in the prominent MBA programs currently.
3
Very encouraging to read this on Christmas Day. By working together and using our God-given brains, we can rebuilt communities. The scent of Ethiopian coffee should help many find there way to Edna. There is strength in diversity.
7
Walmart got its start in small rural towns and now it is abandoning them.
8
Found it interesting that the pastor gave credit to god when tax revenue did not precipitously drop off, but god had no responsibility for Wal-Mart driving out the businesses in the first place or as Wal-Mart swept through rural areas. We are responsible for the bad, but god gets credit for the good. No thanks.
27
From my perspective,” said Mr. Schroer, the pastor. “God provided. I truly believe that.”
I guess if your business is selling god, you’ve got to believe or the tithing my suffer. I don’t believe he will be giving up his tax-exempt status anytime soon.
26
The rationalization of bad business's that make everything around it diminished.
Wallmart is and always will be a blight on a society. No living wage without a battle. Dirty stores. Understaffed outlets. Food Stamps for part time employees. Look at these pictures: the desperation, the bleakness of a $2.63 cent minimum wage for servers. Sick, sick society. Just look at the pictures. And no amount of Religion is gonna save anything other more for the Boss!
Socialism for employers is the fact!
14
@Dwight McFee
trump’s base deplorables reaping what they foolishly sow.
6
5700 people, 26 churches!!! Average congregation of about 250 per church. What miracles keep the churches afloat?
GH
12
@George Hebben 5,700 is those that live within the city limits. Lots of farms and ranches in the surrounding area.
5
The sheep provide....
3
Dance with the Devil, you'll get burnt, is what I always say. Wally World is the Devil in commercial form, throwing its adherents back into the plantation era and not delivering on its many false promises. We don't do Wally World for this and many other valid reasons and this article is just another reason to avoid that evil empire.
7
it's time get those mom n pip stores back in business!
7
5700 people, 26 churches... it explains a lot. this is what will doom America.
21
This was life before Walmart and there will be life after Walmart.
9
I have a problem with Rev. Schorer's "God will provide" philosophy. It takes free will, our own self-determination, out of the equation. I suppose he might argue that his god inspired the people who did the things necessary for Edna to survive the loss of Wal Mart but it still smacks of a hand above determining our futures. It also bothers me that this sounds like somewhere a god chooses winners and losers. Did Shorerr's god tell Sam Walton to fly to Edna all those years ago and then tell Wal Mart's economists it was time to pull the plug?
17
A touching little story until the mention of the sale of ammunition.
7
Anyone who thinks Christianity (or any religion that is about being good to each other) is compatible with Capitalism needs to read this article very carefully.
You can’t be a good Christian and support a company that drains the life from your community, depends on our greed and laziness, and doesn’t pay its fair share … which is what Walmart does.
Just read a quote from Óscar Romero that applies: “If I give bread to the poor, they call me a hero; if I ask why the poor don’t have bread, they call me a communist.”
Merry Christmas, everyone, and a toast to Edna, which seems to have found its way.
24
>Walmart destroyed more families, communities, small businesses and manufacturers too.
Since Rousseau, at least, conservatives and communists have bemoaned the loss of self-willed stupidity with their hysterical opposition to man’s need to focus his independent mind onto concrete reality.
“The brash, bold entrepreneurs who introduced the automobile to the U.S. market....revealed the wastefulness and misallocated character of the enormous volume of investor and labor decisions that mistakenly committed resources to the horse-drawn carriage industry.”
-Israel Kirzner, _The Essence Of Entrepreneurship And The Nature And Significance Of Market Process_
2
Amazon Prime beats shopping at Wal-Mart any day!
3
5700 residents. 26 churches. Enough for me to know I could never live there.
7
Two things struck me. Many of the people who abandoned their local stores (and neighbors) for Walmart with its predatory pricing based or low wages to employees and goods made in China, ultimately got stiffed by Walmart only to then turn to Amazon (and another Walmart) which is just another mega company that relies on predatory pricing, low wages, and made in China which thus raises the question of when will people ever learn.
Secondly, was the pastor Schroer's comment with regard to all this was "God provided. I truly believe that.” So the way Schroer essentially sees it God provided one exploitive business to replace another (or the same) exploitive business.
Don't you just love the fact that according to Pastor Schroer all the good things are done by god and all the bad things are done by the devil or by god working in mysterious ways. I guess this means god has narcissistic personality disorder just like Donald Tump.
16
The withdrawal of Walmart is part of a larger story, the slowing of the American consumer. Despite what the popular business media says, consumption growth in the US has be slowing for years. The consolidation in the retail sector is readily apparent with the demise of other chain operations becoming more evident. E-tailing has hurt margins at most brick at mortar retailers by cutting margins and low waged alternatives. Communities will need to adapt to these changes, perhaps local commerce can work to some degree. But structural changes are needed like a reversal of the 2017 tax bill which gave massive breaks to corporations at a time while profit margins were already at a record high. By putting more money into the hands of people the inequality may be arrested and small towns like Edna might have a better chance.
6
The takeaway from this story is that people can still come together as a community and recognize the old adage “we’re all in this together.” I think Walmart has been more destructive than people recognize. Sure, it has provided low-cost imports from China, but in the end, people would have been willing to pay more for American-produced goods if it meant that American jobs would have been saved. There are lots of messages in this story, but I think the key is to recognize that we build the kind of community we want, and not what big business decides.
5
No town or city needs a Walmart! Low prices for poor treatment of employees! Buy local whenever possible! Allow the small business to flourish again!
11
With all those other supercenters within 25 miles, and Amazon.com and Walmart.com ready to deliver in a day or two, it is not such a hard consumer calculus. Go to Main Street and spent 90 minutes going store to store to shop, or drive 1/2 hour listening to Dennis Prager or Beyonce, shop for 1/2 hour at one locale, and drive back listening to a recorded book or Miranda Lambert. Option #2 is more pleasant
Exactly! Who wants to support local businesses and mingle with your fellow man?
3
In an age where having a different political opinion too often leads to social cancellation, many people don't want to mingle with their fellow humans.
2
Upstate New York towns are dead because of these stores .
7
This is not going to be the first town to feel the impact of Walmart moving on. Most small town Walmart's are cutting employee hours, even forcing longtime managers to start over on the pay scale by changing store hours, cutting out the "open 24 hours " hours out. Small towns survived without Walmart before. Back then Walmart came into a small town forcing honest hardworking longtime businesses to close. Maybe this is karma for Walmart. David slaying Goliath. Believe me if Edna didn't have Highway 59 running past them Walmart wouldn't have built there. Edna can do better and life will be fabulous!
7
Reminds me of the two happiest days of a man’s life story.
Day One, when you buy your boat.
Day Two, when you sell your boat.
Edna you’ve got your community back and you found out who your friends are, now keep them close and support them.
16
Hear, hear!
As a health care provider, I can say that 95% of the clients I care for, who work at Walmart, have their healthcare paid for through our state Medicaid program. Walmart hears no one when they call. It is a soulless corporation with profit as the bottom line, so why are we surprised? Profit over people all the time.
20
As a corporation I thought Walmart didn't pay taxes. But maybe that's just federal and not local.
They’re talking about sales tax. Customers pay sales tax, not corporations.
7
@Jas Kaur Thanks, was unclear to me.
1
Perhaps creative destruction that replaced small shops with brick and motor big box stores years ago is now replacing big box storess with remote shopping solutions.
Most of my Pharmaceuticals are now shipped to my house so I have little need for a local pharmacy outside of an unexpected illness. Similarly, I order many hard goods online from sources like Amazon unless I can not wait a day or two. Music and Video entertainment except legacy big screen movies are now delivered electronically as well.
1
@John. I pray for your soul and that of your neighbors who no longer work in the area.
With a bit of luck this will mean the rebirth of locally owned retail. They could also recycle one of those 26 churches (seriously?) in the process.
7
Happy holiday, read a lot of stories today about people coming together and it fills me with joy. This story brings me hope and happiness after reading about drug manufacturers going out of business and European Union green slug and birds dying. Maybe after all is why our blue planets has been around for over 4 billion years and all life has been wiped out 5 times. Maybe we just don’t get it, will we constantly be set in front of this maze and as we turn the corner thinking it the right way we hear the music go off in our head like an Atari game only to be back in front of the maze starting over again.
2
AOC was right! Why sell out to one business, out of fear of not having that business, when you really don't need that business.
People create business. Invest in them.
16
Now we’re waxing poetic about Walmart? This is a story about adapting to change. I appreciate that Walmart wasn’t portrayed as Satan’s retailer, for once, even though the undercurrent is there..,,
3
Walmart is all glitter and gold when it arrives, but does anyone actually think about how their towns' local businesses are affected? They slowly disappear, as residents move their shopping to the Walmart just for a little convenience and to save a few dollars.
2
I haven't shopped at a Walmart in over 4 years, but I've not had any trouble obtaining everything I need without Walmart in some of the most remote towns out west. I quit shopping there, because it's a terrible company that treats both employees and customers with contempt. They literally couldn't care less if the customers and employees switched roles. They treat everyone like garbage. That's not how capitalism works, so I know something is going on there. Indeed, Walmart recently settled a federal bribery case for hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it's just the tip of the iceberg.
5
This is a good story about the giant retailer's effect on a town: when Walmart arrived, a lot of small businesses disappeared; when Walmart left, the town returned to the pre-Walmart blend of small businesses and smaller stores of large chains, which is probably a healthier mix.
When Walmart arrived in my small town in Washington State, Main Street was devastated. Small clothing stores closed, Sears and JCPenney left town. and more people started traveling to a larger town with lots of national chains to do their more serious shopping.
I started getting a few essentials and oil changes at Walmart, but began doing a lot of online shopping early-on at Amazon. Then I started personally boycotting Walmart because of its politics and treatment of employees. Not that that mattered. Eventually a different mix of small stores returned to Main Street and a new stasis arrived. I even returned to shopping at Walmart for small essentials, although I find their robots and self-checkout lanes irritating..
Retail changes constantly: that is the story of American capitalism, and it works.
1
Actually capitalism doesn’t work as it is nothing more than pyramid scheme driving all expenses out to the benefit of the capital or those holding the capital. We are starting to see the end game of capitalism and it is not pretty or beneficial to society.
3
Thanks for this story of a community coming together to take control of its destiny. Walmart destroys communities, partly by being so convenient, and having everything under one roof. My husband always spoke of his hometown in Eastern Oregon with reverence. When we visited a couple of decades ago, the downtown essentially was shuttered. It reminded me of Larry McMurtry's book "The Last Picture Show." A giant Walmart had stripped the town of its center. Neighborhoods were run down, including the house where he grew up. We never went back.
8
Great story. Thanks for the insights.
3
Careful, Edna. Bringing back too much prosperity through new, thriving local businesses will cause Walmart to return and repeat its decimation cycle.
8
Because of the Walmart model, I will and have not shopped there in decades and I plan to continue.
The Walton's are modern day Scrooges.
The best to the people of Walton and other communities like them. Hopefully, when another big outfit comes calling, they will know enough of say no. Maybe they can change their name to Edna Independence.
5
This sure sounds like capitalism at work.
Someone has a better idea and attracts business. Times change and other entrepreneurs prosper. It doesn't need to be presented as good versus evil. Because it isn't.
How many small town papers has the New York Times digital presence put out of business?
7
How many small town newspapers has the New York Times digital operation put out of business? None. The Times doesn’t do what small-town papers do, and vice-versa.
The traditional business model for small town papers has collapsed. Yet some are still doing OK. The keys are an engaged community where people care about where they live, and independent, not corporate, ownership.
3
Based on the content disparity between NYT and most small-town papers, I would guess the number to be zero as I scan my local paper for anything worth reading.
2
Walmart exists because it is in line with the values of the majority of Americans, among those values: Price is everything; The working poor will just have to do the best they can; Entrepreneur billionaires are the most worshipped and respected celebrities in our culture, etc, etc. Sure, you can find people with other values, but they are not the majority. Thus, Walmart, Trump and the despoiling of the earth, with no end in sight (well, assuming the Constitution holds, Trump will leave office Jan 20, 2025.) Happy, everyone?
6
I never shop Walmart or Amazon. Never. There was a Walmart 2 miles from me and I didn't darken its doors. It's closed now (okay, probably not because of me). Walmart took the crime and poverty that its stores breed to the suburb next door to us--too bad for them. I try to shop local as much as possible, and when I buy something online I check first to make sure the retailer isn't owned by Amazon. This is all pretty easy to do -- try it, you'll like it.
13
I visited Price, Utah once or twice a year for 18 years, population 8,200. I watched as a Supercenter Walmart moved in across the street from where there had been a regular Walmart. Over time, being an occasional visitor, I saw the death and rebirth of this town when the large Walmart opened. Tragically, downtown became decimated with boarded up shops. Walmart became the town square much as it is described in Edna. There were about 5 years when I didn’t visit, and when I returned, USU had a satellite campus in town, all the stores in downtown revived, including new restaurants, and the Supercenter Walmart, while still in business, is a virtual ghost town. Walmart no longer dominates nor swallows all the businesses and jobs. Don’t know what led to this rebirth, but happy to see this town of 8,200 has figured out how to peacefully coexist with a giant Walmart who won’t hesitate to pull up stakes. Good for Edna. Good for Price.
8
The only permanent thing is change. As with everything else in life the good comes with the bad and vice versa.
There are twelve nonprofit food co-ops now in operation in the Twin Cities. For more than fifty years they have competed successfully with for-profit national and regional chains. Edna might want to send a delegation up north to see how it's done.
4
Walmart is just a store, to which consumers go because their prices were cheaper than those stores along the main streets of small town America that people like to go on about. To make the company into a corporate villain makes about as much sense as blaming the process of evolution for the extinction of all those less efficient animals. Walmart also provides an opportunity for, and the image of, the diverse new America at the ground level, unlike those quaint little stores where the upper class white folks go. The town of Edna will learn to make do without their local Walmart, which is fine, but let's not try to pretend that will somehow improve or reverse the economic processes that brought them into the town in the first place.
4
The difference between economics and evolution is that as humans, we have the capacity to build the kind of world we want to live in.
If you want your neighbors to endure a lifetime of low wages and no benefits so you can save a few dollars a week, you can make that choice.
If you want to support living wages and a burgeoning local economy, you have that choice too.
8
I would like to learn more about Aubrey Garcia. Her story is fascinating. First, she works at walmart and now a flower shop. She has the looks of a young movie star. Tell us more about her. Maybe a bio or photo shoot of her journey.
6
The Walmart giveth and the Walmart taketh away.
My rural county, which is next to a less rural county with a fair sized city, has twice voted not to have big box stores. It means more driving for people who want to shop at Walmart or Target, but it also means a local thriving small business environment. We have IGA and Ace Hardware rather than Safeway and Home Depot.
My local Ace receives my Amazon deliveries in winter when delivery trucks can’t get up my road. The store owners get nothing for this, but you can be sure I’m a regular customer, even if I can buy potting soil and batteries somewhere else cheaper.
4
@GiGi What my early ancestors had in the Appalachians(AppaLATCHians)was a general store, which everybody loved!!!! It is still there, selling everything! I hope Edna has one. Musicians played on its porch on weekends!!! BTW, I am wishing
Route 66 gets to be repopulated!
3
The Walmart giveth and the Walmart taketh away.
My rural county, which is next to a less rural county with a fair sized city, has twice voted not to have big box stores. It means more driving for people who want to shop at Walmart or Target, but it also means a local thriving small business environment. We have IGA and Ace Hardware rather than Safeway and Home Depot.
My local Ace receives my Amazon deliveries in winter when delivery trucks can’t get up my road. The store owners get nothing for this, but you can be sure I’m a regular customer, even if I can buy potting soil and batteries somewhere else cheaper.
1
@GiGi Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
While I do fault Walmart and other big corporation for paying so low that the employees there need government help; It is government (means we the people)'s job to ensure that there is at least a baseline income for working(productive) class society member to support themselves w/o government handout.
I am sure that people who work at Walmart do not want government hand out; .. they want dignity and so they work 40h/week - so why can';t we force corporation to pay minimum salary to ensure that our fellow citizens - who works 40h/week can have basic life w/o anyone's help.
This is all due to GOP and their supporters.. It's time we wake up that last 60 years of GOP anti-tax policies and last 40 years of Reagan's policy - have killed core of America.
8
I’m glad to see that Edna is doing well but this should be a cautionary tale to those who rejoice when a Walmart moves into town. Walmart doesn’t care about your town or it’s people. It’s the bottom line and when that doesn’t satisfy they they will be gone and they will leave all of your local store fronts empty and your neighbors jobless! Amazon is no better, in fact if it’s possible, they are worse. They treat their employees like indentured servants.
Buy local. Support your local stores. And for readers in NYC stop ordering on line the trucks clog up the street and fill up the recycle bins and streets out the door men. Enough. No local stores; no eyes on the streets.
3
Walmarts are hard to lose because of the community service they provide, allowing people either traveling or homeless to stay safely in their parking lots. My son, this year, with a friend, was going to look at a vehicle on Craig's List and met the person at Walmart in their town. They traveled a long way to get there, so caught a few hours of snoozes in the Walmart parking lot, before they met the person on their way to work. Apparently, many folks spend the night there safely.
3
@K.M Good to know.
1
If Edna is like most other small towns in South and Central Texas, I'd be willing to bet that most residents would say the real heart of their community is and will continue to be their local HEB grocery (and more) store. And I'd be willing to bet that the HEB in Edna was the number one factor in WalMart's closing. Almost unknown outside of Texas, HEB is WalMart's top brick and mortar competitor and the largest private employer in the state, regularly ranks in Glassdoor's Top-10 best places to work in the US, and is known for its social responsibility and community engagement.
8
Yet another story where times change, and people have difficulty adapting—for awhile—then they get on with things. It will ever be thus.
Yawn.
1
It's a sad day when a Walmart is a "point of civic pride."
17
As another commenter pointed out, malls and big box stores killed Main Street and e-commerce is killing malls and big box stores. So everyone complains about it and yet most people still will order online to save (literally) a few pennies.
I live in an area where there are hundreds of stores within walking distance and three malls within two miles and yet my apartment building of 200 apartments gets at least 50 packages every day. And people will cry when the local shopping areas are filled with empty stores.
Support your communities. Buy local and stop ordering everything from Amazon and other large e-commerce vendors. Their prices are frequently NOT cheaper and even when they are, is worth destroying your local community? Keep the profits and tax base in your community.
11
That last paragraph is tantalizing, maybe a buried lead?:
"The revenue numbers also likely include the purchases Edna residents made on Amazon and other large e-commerce sites. Neither the state nor the city breaks out how much was spent online versus in local stores.
The internet may have killed the Edna Walmart, but on-line sales might be helping maintain the local tax base.
Why don't state and local governments keep better track of the different tax sources?
5
Hard work and the spirit to rise above adversity; these are qualities we all value. You have told a story of light and hope during the darkest days of the year.
No one quoted in this story mentioned any awareness of the irony that their beloved Walmart existed almost entirely to sell them cheaply made Chinese goods, which cost the jobs of millions of other small-town Americans. They voted overwhelmingly for Trump in large part because of his promise to get tough on Chinese trade, while voting the opposite way with their wallets.
Rather than praying for God to provide, perhaps they should try thinking.
15
A thoughtful and well written reminder of the diversity and ever-changing nature of America. The shift in Edna’s shopping habits from Walmart to Amazon.com (and then back to Edna’s stores and local merchants) reflects the relentless nature of modernity and mirrors the economic dynamics of many cities in the U.S. Great writing by Michael Corkery. Wonderful photos by Carter Johnston (including aerials, thoughtful portraits, and a haunting nighttime shot of Edna’s old movie theater).
4
Anyone who has studied Walmart knows that one of their strategies is to first open a store and kill the local businesses by undercutting prices and wages, then consolidate by closing their stores in several regional towns in favor of a centralized megastore so they can cut labor costs even further. Townspeople with no other option will drive an hour round trip to buy the cheap imported foods they’ve gotten used to, and the profits are siphoned out of the region to corporate.
The folks in Edna should rejoice that Walmart closed, and keep their money in the local community (as they’ve started doing). It’s likely that the shopkeepers are paying a living wage to their community members - something that Walmart resists at all costs.
A lot of rural residents have come to believe that there’s not enough money in the world to afford things like a decent wage, community amenities such as libraries and parks, or healthcare for all employees. The truth is that there’s enough wealth in rural America - as long as more of it stays there to build the local economy.
19
I never really cared for Walmart or Sam's Club. They play every bad corporate game that exists. Limit the workers hours so that they don't have to pay benefits. Stress that suppliers need to set up manufacturing in China. Destroy small businesses in the local economy through low prices. I laugh every time that I see the big American flag in front of the store as they are as Un-American as a business can possibly be.
16
Walmart closed its Hearne, TX store in the late 1980's. Hearne has not recovered in the way Edna has. I wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Dallas Morning News personalizing the effect of a Walmart opening and then closing in a small town. Edna appears to be the exception to the usual economic impact that a closed Walmart leaves in its wake.
9
@Steve In the late 1980's, e-commerce was not so much of a thing (maybe a little bit in the way of mail order catalogs). Most non-perishable items can be bought on Amazon. Local grocery, pharmacy, and home improvement stores can supply what Amazon can't.
This may sound like a heart warming story, but it should be real tough for residents there. This kind of situation will be more common to many small towns in the future. As profit trumps everything else for big corporations, nothing will stop them from moving and leaving. Capitalism without human consideration displays its influence and unintended consequence in this small town.
7
I see that there is a Dollar General and a Family Dollar in Edna. In many communities, these dollar stores are taking over the niches once filled by Wal-Mart.
5
With business and industry being such a integral part of functional society and functional society essential to success in business, it's doesn't make sense that government should be so hands off. Nothing will improve until we realize that large companies like Walmart are exploiting the system and government sets wage and operational standards. A balance can be achieved without threatening the incentive of benefiting from hard work.
3
Walmart has very horrible hiring processes, and low wages.
Still, who cannot mourn for the fired families? How will they get by? It is so hard to lose a job.
Yep, Trump will fix it, with his infinite compassion.
1
Carter Johnston’s photography in the Edna feature was a story in itself. Thanks
7
Edna sounds like a nice little place. As I read, I wondered what it would be like to move and live there.
64
@Susan Stohelit Probably a lot hotter and scarier than where you are. Think massive amounts of humidity, heat and bugs, with absolutely nothing to do and no culture of any sort.
14
@R,
They probably have a lot more to do there than making snarky, condescending comments on-line.
15
@Susan Stohelit
I live in Montana and I’ve been to Texas. Montana is better.
6
Shopping in Walmart is repulsive to me. People go into the one here in bare feet. They can’t give away enough plastic bags that get stuck in the palm fronds waving frantically in the breeze. The products are cheap, the lighting too bright and the ordeal depressing. Add to that the thought you may get shot, I’d rather pay a bit more and go somewhere else or make a few cotton blouses myself.
18
What? Haven't we seen retail chain stores buckling before?
In Guatemala City Walmart bought up several big local stores already in existence and then raised prices. Folks here are not happy about it.
2
On a small island in the Philippines, I realized, after chatting with the owner of a sari-sari store and many customers throughout the day,and wandering through a food market where farmers and fishermens wives, mothers, and children sold the the family harvest, or catch, themselves, that buyiing and selling stuff is part of how we weave our social fabric. Walmart cannot escape that role, if it is where most people go, but it is bad at it - you cannot monetize it. It makes us want more stuff, and separates us from our neighbors more than it brings us together. Good riddance.
5
I never shop at Walmart and never will. Unabated greed on the part of their owners prevents them from paying their employees a living wage or providing adequate health benefits. Disgusting.
8
Several years ago Walmart ran TV ads in Canada touting the neighbourliness of its new store in Tweed Ontario. There was no such store! Like Edna, Tweed is a town of fine people working hard to create modest success and are doing OK. For a Walmart experience they go online or drive the 20 miles or so to Belleville. Maybe it’s better not to have “tried and lost”.
It's anthropologically significant that this small town were led to believe that the big box super store filled with inexpensive items from China was the economic superpower driving the economic health of its citizens. Walton swoops into town in an airplane and sells the mayor on the benefits of allowing the Walmart to open by offering jobs and convenience. The leaders don't have the foresight to imagine the loss of Main Street small businesses and believe in the silver tongued outsider. Then, just as abruptly, the Walmart big data scientists conclude that the cost benefits don't support keeping the big box alive with little thought of the consequences of shuttering the super store. Then, as if the blinders were lifted from the townspeople, they realized that they had the capacity to recreate the town pre-Walmart era. Then, again, they are quite pleased with the locally owned small businesses and come to realize they were self sufficient without the big box behemoth. Somewhere hidden in this short story is a morality play about the power of good conduct and character. As the famous Rosicrucian Francis Bacon once said: "“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake...”
19
I have always thote that the answer to Big Corporate Companies was a revival of the co-op movement of the early last century.
3
Not only is there no such thing as a free lunch, but maybe there's no such thing as progress either. Hear me out:
Pre-Walmart Edna did pretty well, I surmise, as a small town, knitted together in many ways, providing perhaps the maximum of social benefits, good friends, and good will. And Houston was only 30 minutes away: the best of both worlds.
Walmart moves in: Wow! More, cheaper stuff, all in one convenient place. Sure, it hurts the local retailers, who are longtime residents and taxpayers, but Walmart supposedly saves the average American consumer $2,300/annually.
However, Walmart jobs don't pay enough to live on, so the local, state, and federal government step in and provide housing, WIC, Medicaid, etc., paid for with taxes using up the $2,300 those consumers saved. The Walmart concept boils down to a Trojan horse: Beware Big Business bearing gifts.
Now it sounds like Edna has returned to its pre-Walmart days. The experiment in bigness is over, reminding us that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill. Quality is superior to quantity.
Hometown values and lifestyles may not offer glitzy entertainments and shop-till-you-drop opportunities, but they do offer an almost invisible pride, belongingness, and peace of mind: Nice little town you've got here. Quiet, easygoing, safe, and friendly. But maybe too quiet? Houston, we have a problem:
"All of humanity's problems stem from the inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
-- Blaise Pascal
12
@Jim Muncy
"too quiet? Houston, we have a problem:"
what is the issue here ?
the massive city of Houston only 30 minutes away ?
just drive , like the rest of us
sheesh
@thostageo
Not supporting adding to carbon footprints, instead, my comment was trying to point out that man is restless and craves change, which never ultimately satisfies. But we are always suckers for bright and shiny, like the Prodigal Son.
Like every other company - like Sears and K Mart before it - Walmart will die out sooner or later. The internet will kill it or change it into an Amazon. The giant superstores, like the smaller stores they already abandoned, will go empty and sit there as reminders of just another way of life that came and went. Nothing is more constant than change, and change is accelerating as we pursue the almighty profit. Looks like Edna has found a way to step back, chill, and pursue the profit locally. Kudos to Edna.
4
@Brookhawk Reality Check walmart sold out what made it huge ,Made In USA. As did all other companys in USA who lost there vission.
1
When you live in the middle of nowhere with the closest Walmart almost an hour drive, you learn that if one of those Walmart closes. Amazon wins at everything.
Even in the richest communities, I see full Walmart parking lots, why? Because despite their name or brand, they have become the local market in many ways.
2
Amazon is new Walmart now!
3
Check back in a year when the temporary flow ends and tax revenues falls
The great irony of small-town redstate USA, is their devotion to Walmart.
It was Walmart who originated the business-model of requiring their vendors produce all their mass-marketed consumer products in China to undercut competition & maximize profits.
It was Wallies who leveraged that slave-labor sweatshop production to intentionally wipe out all the small retailers in town.
The imagery that fueled the rise of Trumpism, of boarded-up mom-&-pop-shops shops across the rural heartland, laying blame for the demise of local retail at the feet of 'Mexicans' & 'Trade Deals', was like all things Trump, Fake News.
Rather it was redstatists themselves who by stocking up on disposable plastic shlock at Walmart, abetted the destruction of rural retail & manufacturing jobs in the consumer-products sector.
By making Wallies their universal retailer, rural America destroyed the local hardware store, toy store, grocer, jeweler, baker, shoe store, apparel, dress-shop, pharmacy, mall, & all the associated sales-tax base, local small business profits & jobs that kept the economy of commerce within the community.
Walmart sucked those profits out of town to finance the wealthiest retail family oligarchy the world has ever known.
In 2015, the six Waltons on Forbes 400 list were worth $136.1 billion, making them the richest family in the United States.
So don't blame China, blame the Trump voters themselves for sucking the blood out of American commerce by choosing to shop at Walmart.
29
@Tldr
"in 2015, the six Waltons on Forbes 400 list were worth $136.1 billion, making them the richest family in the United States. "
this... enough for you guys ?
1/10 of that $ is not even comprehensible
yikes
1
I would like to see a follow up article on Edna 5 years from now. I’m hoping their downtown re-establishes itself and the people find another communal location to gather in.
5
It's simplistic to paint Walmart as evil. They have the same philosophy as Barnes and Noble and Home Depot and Kroger and Target but do it 'better', in terms of creating owner value. I don't shop at Walmart - and luckily I live somewhere where there are choices - but I'm well aware that there is no real virtue in this unless I also boycott all but Mom and Pops' stores. And we will see more Walmarts closing while Amazon continues to flourish.
5
@Andrew What comes after Amazon? What does the anti-Amazon revolt in Long Island City mean anyways?
Perhaps the FTC should look at local monopolies such as one store supporting the economy and hopes of a town.
3
@Crsig And do what about it? Force some other store to open and run at a loss? Seems the people of Edna have developed their own response - and it is working. Why do people want the government to be/provide the answer to everything? And what if the government solution is to promote a remote service like an Amazon?
1
The cold, calculating dynamism of capitalism has not a care of anyone or anything but profit.
As America has increasingly become capitalism's tool rather than capitalism being a tool for American's prosperity, we slide further into greater and greater disparities.
We can regulate capitalism to benefit the 99% or allow only 1% to know its cold advantages.
15
Walmart is a destroyer of towns. Once a Walmart moves in, local small stores cannot compete, they go out of business. These people may discover that their loss, is actually a blessing.
13
The Town of Edna can now return to it's pre-Walmart identity. Small businesses now have a chance to thrive. The citizens of Edna should think back to all the good people who's locally owned businesses were destroyed by Walmart and rejoice in the opportunity return to their roots.
9
WalMart can't seem to get even a morsel of sympathy around here. It is condemned when it opens a store in a new location, even if it replaces inefficient, expensive and customer-unfriendly "Ma-and-Pa" outlets. Then, if and when the chain closes one of its stores because of diminishing patronage, it is condemned for following the most basic principle of commerce: Go where the customers are.
And no, I do not love any of the Big chains. But NIMBY has its limits.
7
The major corporations recently got major tax cuts. They didn't use the tax cuts to reinvest and create jobs as promised. Instead, national debt and deficits have exploded. History, of course, repeated itself. The little guys and the little towns are struggling like never before and this won't change until taxes are fair for all. But the fat cats won't let that happen. The swamp is deeper than ever!
15
Personally, I don't shop at Walmart because they don't serve my needs, but I have nothing against Walmart conceptually. What I find interesting is that many of the readers criticizing Walmart and longing for a return to "mom and pop" businesses seem to be motivated by the same types of sentiments that motivate "tea party" types and Trump supporters, who want to "make America great again" by restoring some romanticized but outdated form of living.These people never recognize the aspects of life in the past that were undesirable or truly pernicious (e.g., de jure racism, lack of work opportunity for women, etc.). As another reader notes, so-called "mom and pop" stores may seem great, but they have higher prices, shorter hours, fewer selections, etc. In other words, they can't serve communities, especially lower-income communities, the way large retailers like Walmart can. History doesn't move backwards. And while it's tempting to wish otherwise during this season, in 2019 we can't turn small towns into Bedford Falls.
14
@The Judge So I guess you'd say that the businesses which allows the most Americans to buy the most stuff are the best businesses? Right?
So how much is enough? How does this all end? When Americans, already the most wasteful citizens on the planet, have consumed every possible resource left and turned it into waste lying in landfills? When the human species, having killed off all of the other species, itself follows the path of the dodo and the giant sloth?
I believe this type of thinking needs a revisit.
5
I have stepped into a Walmart 3 times in my life.
When I became aware of the treatment of employees, the small community businesses it eradicated and the billions of products imported from China, I will never give them another penny of my hard earned dollar.
I am sadden for this community but, the silver lining is the revival of local businesses.
15
Over the long term if Walmart and Amazon are not brought under control they will gain even more control. Well they were there for a long time and now the grand children of Sam Walton are worth over $200 billion. Wal Mart is not unionized. Amazon is not unionized. Keep voting for the Republicans and they may talk of slavery again. Look in the mirror , meditate and face the coming reality of the future.
We are no longer heading into an oligopoly we are living in an economy based on the oligopoly model.
12
@Ralph Petrillo . Walmart has been replaced by dollar stores.
3
the elephant in the room is the fact that taxpayers are funding walmart employees. the walton family of multi-billionaires count their bucks while employees need medicaid subsidies for health care and food stamps for groceries.
it is such a sad commentary on capitalism
48
@pamela -------If politicians had a spine they'd send the bill for those Medicaid subsidies directly to Walmart HQ.
1. I shop at a Walmart that's been in the area for decades. It's one-stop shopping (rather than driving to five stores), the pricing is excellent, the employees are friendly and very capable and are paid more than minimum wage. Scorn Walmart all you want; I view it as a benefit.
10
What about having a bakery, a butcher, a hardware store and a pharmacy in town ? You have sacrificed that for convenience !
Think about it !
Merry Xmas !
6
@HotGumption What about walking to five stores, seeing your friends and neighbors as your do so. It happens in NYC, SF, New Orleans and used to happen in small towns all around America. As MacArthur once said, "I shall return".
2
Walmart (in the UK known as ASDA) has closed a number of outlets in the last 10 - 15 years.
There appears one significant difference between the UK and US experience, in that Walmart faces stiff competition from the three other companies and two discounters of German origin. The 'one store, one community' is not so prevalent here.
8
There is nothing new in Walmart destroying a town’s retail base, and then moving on. They’ve been doing it for years. Aberdeen, Mississippi, a town of about 5,000, is the county seat of Monroe County, about 30,000 total. In the early sixties Aberdeen had a thriving downtown. A five and dime, bakery, three banks, two grocery stores, hardware, drug store, movie theater, and other assorted mom and pop stores. Walmart came in and destroyed the local merchants. After about fifteen years, they closed and built another store 30 miles away. This was more than 40 years ago. The small poor town has never recovered.
18
Socialism is evil.
When military bases close they leave horrible contamination of the groundwater. They try to get away with cleanup to only industrial standard instead of a residential standard. Hopefully Walmart didn't leave groundwater contamination from a gasoline station leak. But it would be great if MalWart would halt the sales of thousands of tons of pesticides that are wiping out the birds and bees and giving children leukemia. Reducing so much plastic packaging and bags would be welcome.
12
MalWart! Love it! We just call it “the evil empire.” When he was about 8 years old, my son remarked as we were leaving Walmart, “we left our souls in there.” I should add that he was a vegetarian and an anti consumption advocate. How things have changed! Despite taking him out of the country as often and as long as possible (on a state employee’s salary), he now yearns for sneakers and clothes and eats processed food purchased at Walmart (stuff that he would have never touched when he was a child). Sigh, moan, groan...........
They closed the store to increase their global corporate gross margins and profits. In this way, good news is reported to Wall Street and the never ending demand for positive financial trends from shareholders is met. It helped Walmart beat profit expectations in 2018 (when this store was shut down) causing their stock price to go up. Needless to say, Walmart bought back its own stocks in the amount of $20 billion in the same year. The company also invested heavily in their on line business.
I have worked with Walmart as a supplier. They are driven entirely by financial results and nothing else. Their competition is Amazon who thinks and acts the same way. Needless to say, the needs of a community when a Walmart store is shut down is of no concern to corporate management. If it were, they'd probably be fired.
32
Look at the bright side...within a few years the person making the decision to shut these stores down will be replaced by a robot, who will inform the managing robot in the store of the change. The worker robots will dismantle the store and transform it into an Amazon distribution center within a few days, where the robots will now pull orders 24/7. The robots will work continuously because they don't need time off, overtime pay, or health care. Life will be grand for everyone who cares to remain in such a world. Wow...ain't America great? Again??
19
Many areas are not so lucky. At least Edna did not give huge incentives and tax breaks to Walmart to locate there in the first place. Many other communities find themselves with huge empty buildings at the end of the lease period and the incentives.
16
When Walmart leaves. The town dies unless Dollar General comes in. The "Walmart" for small rural towns.
12
Capitalism cuts both ways.
Here in Europe efforts are made to keep aggressive capitalism at bay.
The resulting balance prevents devastating shocks to the local economy.
If a private company is going to be sold to another larger corporation that can’t be trusted, the French government steps in and buys the smaller company.
This is a temporary solution until the company can be entirely privatized again.
11
Thank you for the explanation. France is our refuge from life in the US and Walmart. How I miss le marche et le pain et le vin et les gens. The funny thing is that our town is one of the few in the US that has a Lidl. Merci.
The reverse WalMart story shows how this retailer has managed to hollow out hundreds of small towns. They move in, the local merchants shrink and fade away. The character of local communities is altered and, in many cases, people stop running into their neighbors in stores because they draw customers from miles around and are bigger, less friendly.
The WalMart value equation is often a false one. They offer inferior goods at lower prices but, many times, that just means people have to go back more often to buy more inferior goods when the not-so-old ones wear out.
There is also a lot of tricky merchandizing. I noticed for years that they did not offer true HD television screens for sale, offering only 720p screens instead of 1080p. To someone who didn't understand the difference, the 720 screen looked like a bargain but it was, once again, an inferior product, no bargain. This would be like a car dealer offering only 4 cylinder cars without telling customers better, faster 6 cylinder cars were available. Deceptive, in other words.
One of the advantages of a WalMart, however, is the fact that you can buy items in small towns that one could otherwise not find available in the old, stuck in their ways small stores. Yet, there is a very high price for this convenience and false bargains based only on price, not quality.
14
There is a western wear store, well known for having been in business for almost a century, located in Northside Ft. Worth, Texas, that has a slogan over its sales floor that goes something like this: "The thrill of low price fades long before the disappointment of low quality sets in." That's WalMart: cheap goods that wear out quickly and are, generally, inferior in every way. A local merchant, in contrast, has to see repeat customers month after month, year after year and if they get poor quality, regardless of price, they don't come back.
WalMart is a mass merchandizer. They count on people walking the aisles and buying even if they felt cheated on previous visits. For people of low income, however, quality is often less important than just being able to afford to meet their family's needs. That's the WalMart equation, not always, but most of the time: low quality goods for low wage earners.
25
Where is this cheap merchandise produced ? China
Revitalisation of small local retail stores founded by local citizens will revive small town America !
That is real conservative policy. Walmart is Manchester capitalism !
2
Dear God, are we so far gone that we mourn the loss of the beast that destroyed the town in the first place?
58
At least the Whataburger in the aerial photo seemed to be busy.
10
I'd advise the folks in Edna to do what folks in Green Bay, Wisconsin have already done. In Green Bay, the WalMart competes with the giant Woodman's grocery store, which is locally owned, and boasts that employees own stock in it. Woodman's pretty much offers everything that WalMart offers, but at a lower price. The trick is that the locally based Woodman Brothers, who run the store, have learned to use the Internet to find the best deals for customers. This may mean buying cheese that was produced locally, produce from local farmers, but it may also mean many good deals that the Woodman Brothers have shopped from Chinese producers, and from all over the country. It's all based on using the net to proactively stock a grocery/household items store. People taking charge of their own destinies, etc.
4
Businesses can’t win in these pages. They’re demonized when they’re successful as monopolies in waiting contributing to inequality, then demonized when they fail as leaving the vulnerable exposed. How about we try respecting them and their creators for a change for the material good they do provide?
9
Because our system of business is broken. Wal-mart changed this town when it moved in and now the consequences of corporations moving out is here. What’s to celebrate?
6
@M.D. Walmart didn’t change the town. The people changed their shopping, choosing to ignore the impact on the area. They saw jobs, convenience, increased purchasing power, tax revenues. They ignored the potential downfalls and became concerned only when Walmart left. Look at Granbury, TX and what they did when Walmart showed up...
@MPO ---They ask for it....look at the NFL, you can count on one hand the number of stadiums built entirely with private capital. All others are subsidized by taxpayers so owners can charge outrageous ticket prices and parking fees. Oakland is a prime example, the Raiders are leaving for the second time because the city won't pay for a new stadium despite the fact the owner get $255 million annually from the tv contract alone, add in shared revenue from ticket sales league wide and the team is wildly profitable. BTW the revenue bonds sold to finance the last stadium remodel are still not retired.
1
Edna sold out to Walmart.
Walmart sold out Edna.
36 years; just over one generation.
From 1882 to 1982 - 100 years the town did ok, let's hope they can find another way.
There are suckers born every minute.
7
God and capitalism: *not the same thing*.
6
the America of the corporations, for the corporations. This is capitalism folks..
9
@ZOPK55 There are many different ways of regulating capitalism, and these approaches result in various economic systems which can all be called capitalism. It's no more a foregone conclusion that capitalism will change and abandon towns like Edna than it is that communism will result in a hermit monarchy like North Korea.
1
Capitalism is kind of wonderful isn’t it?
The town couldn’t support this large store, but the wonderful free market system found a way to get folks what they needed, with new stores popping up. Truly marvelous.
3
The disappearance of small retailers is a consequence of free market forces that I suspect many of Edna's residents would be unwilling to restrict. Those family-run businesses were often an artifact of fair trade laws. To bring them back would require going back to list prices firmly maintained (which we know by experience is difficult to enforce) or some other approach (like prohibiting discounts at the wholesale level for higher volume purchases).
If we are unable to embrace steps of that kind, lamenting the loss of small retailers is just sentimentality. If we do embrace them, are we ready to accept the higher prices that will result? I don't claim to know which is the correct answer.
7
In a small town, Walmart can be a clean, well-lit place, consistent in quality and stock on a daily basis, with goods at low prices all in one place. It opens and closes at the same time every day, year round serving people of the the same socio-economic status. You go there and see people like yourself getting filling the same needs you're filling, with a vehicle in the parking lot that is no better or worse than your own vehicle. In short, it's a reassuring sign that all is well because the needs and wants of people just like you are being met.
Some of us may loath it because it interferes with our vision of the small town as Mayberry, but by the time we were sold on that vision, Mayberry was mostly a fallacy. That Edna is moving on from the Walmart model is a credit to the community, but make no mistake, they'll always miss it.
14
don't forget how walmarts and supercenters change themselves,
i remember that walmart started out rural where i grew up,
and seemed more like a service merchandise.
then they expanded and expanded and super centers came,
and "whow. look at all this"
and now, the same town where i 'grew up'
the local supercenter is a crime and transient infested,
place to avoid.
and the rest of the town, is doing BETTER, thankfully.
though, not by much.. katrina recession gentrification,
the things you witness 42 years in one rural town, i tell
people it was a cooler time back then, because it WAS!
2
Hilarious the Walmart founder flew in and the first thing he asked for was a free ride.
74
Blessing in disguise.
3
Amazon should take care of most needs.
4
@Al - - - Or-r-r-r we could check recent news reports of the life that Amazon warehouse workers endure at work.
I don't see gov't at any level stepping in to play the role of a labor union on strictly wage & hour -quality of life issues. (esp. in Tx.)
Now, the customers DID have a slightly higher standard of living b/c of that store for the entire time many people lived there because of cheap goods.
Okay, bankers, let's get some loans made to newly-needed retailers.
3
When I drove into White Plains for dog food, I saw the big hole that was suddenly left behind. Took the money and ran is what they did.
5
Bye-bye inequitable corporate control.
Hello local synergistic sustainability.
4
Making the 26 churches in that town pay taxes would probably help.
63
Of all the comments on this story, it looks like you've hit the nail square on the head .
6
@Galadriel
Perhaps those churches you aren't taxing are providing soup kitchens, clothing, counseling and other free services to augment the minimum wage salaries corporate behemoths like Walmart pay.
2
Plenty of pluses and minuses for Walmart and Amazon, but what communities, small business, moms & pops? Whether it's a big box, or online, we have lost Main Street, local newspapers, communities, seeing or neighbors and talking to one another. We have a lonely world, where people just talk on their cells instead of socializing. The only excitement is a the sound of gun shots.
4
The story is great, but the photography here is superb. Cheers to Carter Johnston.
20
Walmart is facing challenges from Amazon and Aldi. The future will be very interesting. I for one would rather support a company based in Washington or Germany, than one based in Arkansas. Any state that picks Huckabee for governor doesn’t deserve my cash.
16
@Keith Dow - AR voted straight Democrat in Presidential races until Reagan.
2
Pre 1970s Southern Democrats become today's Republicans. The people didn't change, they just changed parties.
1
@Keith Dow . Dollar stores!
1
Why all the negativity, stereotypes and sarcasm? I lived in a small Texas town near Edna. When I hear the "God will take care of us" statement, I realize how this sounds, its an expression, to remain hopeful. I heard it all the time, but there was a clear understanding, God works through human means. I do not believe most people in Edna will passively sit down and wait for the answer to drop from the sky. ( If it does, let me know :) )
Merry Christmas
18
A few years ago I met friends at a local restaurant in Edna and had a great meal of quail and pinto beans and rice. I wanted a memento so I bought a shirt at Walmart that says Edna. When I am in Beeville, where my parents lived for a few years, I go to Walmart on occasion to get a big city experience. But I mostly take care of all my needs at H.E.B. Recently got some good fresh hot tamales there.
3
For the folks flipping out over the 26 churches, keep in mind about 20 of those churches likely only have about 10 people in the congregation and an average parishioner age of 75. Religion in the South has an awful lot of fragmentation and stubbornness about tradition.
9
"Walmart was Edna’s engine — one of its largest employers, a big taxpayer, a 24-hour social hub in a community of about 5,700 people surrounded by rice fields, ranches and grassland."
nothing could be more American than a company that pays its workers so little that they have to work two jobs. That minimizes its employees hours so that they're not "employees" and don't have need health insurance. That pays suppliers so little that they inevitably go bust. That packs up and leaves town as soon as its margins don't meet corporate expectations.
Thank you, Walmart, for upholding this American Dream, in which the rich can become richer and, *when appropriate* , some morsels can be flung to the workers, until such time as it is no longer appropriate.
Merry Christmas everyone. Good luck to us all.
45
Businesses come, businesses go. The tenor of this article feels like a demonizing of Walmart, which served that community for a long time, and served it well. Walmart left and small businesses have filled the void. That's life. Things ebb and flow.
8
Sorry: This is the blueprint of unbridled corporate America. It kills local businesses and then the town.
40
@HotGumption my grandmother always used to say "leave a place better than how you found it?" Do you think that's what WalMart did?
2
@George
Did you read the article? Edna is regenerating.
1
It simply means that there's nothing to extract of the little town anymore, not even for a leeching parasite like Wal-Mart.
14
I gave a woman a ride down the highway in Edna to the food bank a few months ago; I was stunned at the size of the throng waiting for the bank to open. Trucks and cars were lined up for at least a mile down towards the highway. I live in the area, but have never seen need like that...how many small towns are suffering like this?
40
They should have started buying local before they let Walmart destroy their community.
7
Like all the Brooklynites did with Wegmans?
3
Walmart is the most obvious example of chains overtaking small towns turning them all into to Anytown, USA’s. It always amazes me when people are excited with the arrival chains.
3
Wegmans is not that big a deal to most Brooklynites. We still have farmers markets.
2
So many churches and I bet there is very little love in this Texas town. As expected.
7
Because there is so much love in NY? I bet you've never been out of the state.
4
It’s called progress. That’s what happens.
1
Michael Corkery who wrote the story: what was the sales tax revenue to the town the last year that the store was open (2018), and what was the sales tax revenue to the town for 2019? This is crucial information to assess impact, and that data has got to be available.
10
5700/36=
That's a little less than 160 people per church.
ijs
1
Walmart and other Republican supported big box retail stores come in and destroy all the local small business. Next, the only job left in town is, working at Walmart!
Then earning Walmart sub-minimum wages with no benefits, the only place you can now afford to shop is - Walmart!
Walmart decides its not profitable enough to stay, and closes the store after sucking the community dry - you, your family and community are bankrupt!
You can thank the “money above all” Republican Party for this and for the basic gutting of our America working, middle class.
Yet the same people still blindly support conmen like trump and the rest of the GOP?
As a guy who grew up in Georgia and Indiana, I just don’t get it. I’m confused /
38
@Steven
What destroys local small businesses are residents who forsake them in the stampede to the big box store.
3
Same thing happened in the small (pop. 3,550) South Carolina town of Winnsboro. There's a PBS documentary about it (available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taSfSdr9vMo).
9
Imagine, life goes on without a Walmart. The residents of Edna will find there are some things they can do without, and find some local ways to fill other needs that pop up. And it'll be better because it IS local, not homogeneous.
4
“God will find a way to provide what you need,” Mr. Schroer wrote. Of course "God" could have simplified the provisioning process by deciding not to close the Walmart in the first place. But then, it's always "a part of "His" glorious, unknowable plan" when something terrible happens and an occasion to fall one's knees in worshipful gratitude when something good does. Personally, I'd rather pay tribute to the hard working, imaginative citizens who who guided Edna through this storm.
431
@Phillip Usher
Perhaps God gave them the fortitude and insight to persevere and prevail over this challenge that was presented to their community. Good for them.
11
@J. Brian Conran, OD He could have just given them another Walmart.
33
@J. Brian Conran, OD
I don't know, Brian. For example, most evangicals' interpretation of the bible portray god as suffering from something like narcissistic personality disorder, a characterist also shared by their first and second favorite national leaders.
26
Aside from the presence of guns & gun violence, the thing that has always amazed me about the USA is the overwhelming public display of religious extremism. even politicians on the USA have no shame advertising religion, praying in public, being evangelicals etc, whereas in every other western country, that kind of behaviour would be disqualifying off the bat. My point is : 26 churches in a town of 5,700 !!! i thought nothing more could shock me about USA religion, but 26 churches in a town of 5,700 ! is that a typo?
554
@Steve kohl no...it's not a typo. 7 banks, 3 donut shops, 4 Bbq restaurants, 3 Mexican food restaurants not counting the new street taco food truck and the infamous Linda's tacos for breakfast....
It's a unique community. And it's not Walmart we miss.... it's the social aspect we miss the most. And knowing so many of our friends who worked there who were not given the opportunity to transfer with the same pay or opportunities....
261
@Jan Taylor It is not a unique community. It's quite typical for small American towns to be filled with churches with people who can't stand the people who attend the other churches. I grew up among dozens of such towns. This is the basic nature of small towns throughout the rural US.
110
only 3 donut shops? for a town of 5,700?
there's the difference between a USA & Canada . you have 26 churches & 3 donut shops; we would have 26 donut shops & 3 churches
451
26 churches? Perhaps, in the interest of charity, they could voluntarily pay some taxes.
955
@WPCoghlan absolutely! I have long felt churches need to help support the infrastructure they use. Even a 1% tax on contributions would be something.
149
@WPCoghlan
At least on their non-ministerial activities, like selling tee shirts and mugs.
49
@WPCoghlan I certainly have no argument with that idea. If they are going to preach a political stance from the pulpit then they should not have tax exemptions.
It is all part of the lopsided capitalism that is ingrained in American government. It is inconceivable to think that our many professional football teams in the NFL make tons of profit for their wealthy owners and the wealthy investors while John Q working man can't afford to attend any games. Their seats are ranging from $75 for thin air level seating to hundreds of dollars to sit close to the sidelines. To add insult to injury the NFL is considered a non-profit organization. Only in America.
127
Sad and heartwarming at the same time. A whole lot of good people just trying to get by. Like the town I grew up in, where my folks are buried, and of which I often think.
185
@Charles Becker Merry Christmas, Charles!
3
@Charles Becker Roughly 60% of those "good people" vote to put children in prison and for politicians and policies that would make the Taliban jealous.
6
Ahhh...but one business’ loss is another ones fortune waiting to be made. I see opportunity for small businesses when one of these behemoths moves out of a small town. However, the people of the town have to do their share and support the new business that will come instead of chasing after the one that dumped them without as much as a second thought!
284
@SG1 ...or just driving the 25 miles to one of the several other wallyworlds in the area.
7
@SG1
Indeed, then the money can go back into pockets of people who actually live in Edna.
8
Be grateful it's gone. Now the community has an opportunity to return to normal, if not a different era when small businesses, many family owned, thrived. A pharmacy is a good start. Mom and Pop stores were once the foundation of many small towns and communities across our nation. Walmart destroyed more families, communities, small businesses and manufacturers too. Maybe with a little bit of luck Walmart will begin to close other stores. A few hundred billion less in imports from China would give manufacturing an opportunity to return to America.
Good bye Walmart. Thank fully yours, Jack Frost.
445
As a former supplier to Walmart most fellow capitalists see the volume of business and profit made from this customer is hard to match by other customers but doing the actual business at store level in every aspect in every store is draining for the hoops you have to go through and the general negative attitude towards us vendors by store management. Like the customer who say they won’t shop in Walmart again the same can be said of us vendors who also won’t shop in the chain.
63
@Jack Frost
I once lived in a small town that was ravaged temporarily by a new mall many years ago. But those small businesses had charged high prices for goods, many of which could be purchased more cheaply at the mall.
15
@Jack Frost small businesses are looked upon with glasses that’s are far too rosy. They employ very few and tend to have limited selection and higher prices. I grew up in a small town was much improved by Walmart coming.
19
My husband grew up in Edna. He grew up with ‘credit’ at the local hamburger shop (his mom would pay the bill every week or so). The Edna of his stories was the quintessential small Texas town. He clearly remembers when Walmart came to town—a thriving downtown soon shut down. He left 25 years ago. How bizarre that Edna has seen Walmart come and go.
360
@Susan Why did he leave?
7
@Susan
The hamburger place was the "Triangle Treet" and it served the best (and greasiest) for miles around. Sadly, the McDonalds and Whataburger took their toll and it's now gone. Not too different from what happened when Wal Mart arrived.
14
@Susan Adam Smith's invisible hand moves again .Capitalism works in spite of what Elizabeth Warren and her followers say. Go Edna you are the heart of the world.
5
Not sure what’s more sad about this story, that a corporate behemoth that barely pays a livable wage leaves a town in the lurch, or that all these folks built their lives around, and put their trust in, this “superstore.” Regardless, these tales always end badly for the townspeople involved.
224
@Peter ERIKSON - and Walmart rapes the local / state economy by forcing its part time employees to seek Medicaid and other state assistance in order to live.
So we get to subsidize and huge and profitable corporation.
And then these same corporations (Walmart, Amazon) find ways (thanks to the GOP) to not even pay income tax! Some even get 'refunds'.
Isn't there something wrong with this picture?
100
@A2er Maybe in Michigan, but not in Texas. Texas has the nation's second lowest Medicaid max income qualification. That means you can't work and qualify for Medicaid benefits. Any Federal work requirement would effectively clear the state's Medicaid rolls. Basically the state's uninsured have to use urban public E.R.'s supported by urban county tax payers exclusively. Wealthy Collin county sends its poor to Dallas county and we have to pay for it.
25
@A2er
Since 2008 Walmart has paid $64 B in corporate income tax, while Amazon has paid $1.4 B. This is despite the fact that, in the last 24 months, Amazon has added the value of Walmart to its market cap. [at Sept 2017]
Walmart also collected and remitted sales/use taxes to local communities on all of its sales, unlike Amazon, which only recently started collecting and remitting sales/use taxes.
Try to confine your criticism to offenses Walmart is actually guilty of, like providing jobs and benefits to entry skilled employees.
15
How many of the people in Edna (and other towns where Walmart moved in then departed) abandoned their local grocer, stationary store, apparel stores, and pharmacy to save a few bucks per purchase to shop at Walmart?
Those same citizens then cry the blues when Walmart abandons their town.
Meanwhile the shop owners who were stiffed by their townspeople have either moved on, or not forgotten the absence of loyalty.
Sure, Walmart abandoned Edna, but not before the residents abandoned Edna retailers.
585
@Limone , good to know citizens like you will pay more to avoid Walmart and Amazon, really. But for people who are hard up for rent and medicine, it may be a different, and harder, choice.
63
@Limone Regarding “the absence of loyalty”: In our current capitalist society, the only loyalty is to one’s own bottom line, and only in the short term.
34
@Limone - In a lot of cases the small town merchant didn't pay much in wages, and most did not provide health insurance, vacation etc.
Walmart's health insurance isn't the greatest either.
Most small businesses just simply can't afford to be very generous in the personnel policy area.
12
My biggest grip with Walmart is very simply this : the average pay for the majority of its Employees is so low that we Taxpayers must subsidize them. Not that I begrudge helping Employees, BUT why does that have to be a taxpayer function ? Permanently??? How many BILLIONS is too many, Walton Family ? When does it end ? I avoid shopping at any of their Stores, unless we are traveling and it’s the only option. Good Luck, Edna.
764
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Socialize costs. Privatize profits. Socialism for $Billion Corporations is good, divine blessing from God. For a hungry kid, Socialism is bad and evil.
These are heartland American values.
180
@Phyliss Dalmatian
So I can open a store in the US not pay my employees enough to live on, because the taxpayers will step in and subsidise their wages? Then those same taxpayers think my store in great because my prices are low allowing me to make lots of money. Then I can spend some of that money lobbying the folk in power to keep that deal going. (Well bribing them I suppose, but not a word used in polite society). Then I have had my tax reduced because I am now wealthy. Wow. Having been a small retailer here, and paying my employees a decent wage so they can care for their families and not have to rely on the taxpayer to help, I have certainly been a bit of a galah.
160
Jackson- The average pay is higher than minimum wage and still quite far from a livable wage making those workers eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, section 8, wic, subsidized day care and the earned income tax credit.
Jackson: please tell us why investors should pay lower rates than workers while tax payers subsidize their workforce and they bear no responsibilities toward the communities their businesses reside?
62
Unbelievable. I watched as Walmart decimated all the local businesses in Hermiston, a small town in Eastern Oregon. Similar stories played out all across America. With luck it will turn out that Walmart leaving may be the best thing that happened to this town in 40 years.
849
Walmart is a blight to any community it locates a store in. Tax payers pay for the utilities (water, sewage and electricity) to be installed. Walmart doesn't pay a living wage to its non management employees and they cheat employees out of overtime pay due the employees with a slap on the wrist fine (if any fine). The citizens of these small towns need to be loyal to the family owned businesses that were in the town before Walmart arrived. Walmart sells goods produced in sweatshops all over the world and the goods aren't always the highest quality.
37
Please. “Decimate” means to reduce by a tenth. “Destroy,” “ruin,” “level” and “salt the earth behind them” but not “decimate.”
Thank you.
17
@Ignatius Kennedy
that is long done and gone
nowadays fell free to use as a substitute for all your excellent suggestions
truly
1
Never stepped foot in a Walmart. Never will. I visited their fancy museum in Arkansas a few years ago. That experience told me all I need to know about the Walton family.
8
McDowell County, WV lost its Walmart and another regional big box store, Magic Mart, within the past three years. The loss of these retailers has been very challenging in a region with few mom and pop retailers, the decline of good paying jobs, and challenges to ecommerce fulfilment. These closures and the damage they do to civic pride and individual hope should make crystal clear the reason why MAGA has such resonance in places like McDowell.
4
I bet you have three Dollar Generals though.
2
I will never understand corporate logic.
.
I grew up in central Maine and now live in Fort Bend County Texas, about 70 miles northeast of Edna. Skowhegan Maine is only a little bigger than Edna Texas. It’s closer to Waterville than Edna is to Victoria. (Waterville is only about 1/5 the size of Victoria by the way). I’m certain Texas’ Highway 59 gets ALOT more traffic than Maine’s Route 201; 59 goes right by the Edna Walmart and 201 goes right by the Skowhegan Walmart.
.
But somehow, in logic only explicable to executives in a board room, Skowhegan got its Walmart upgraded to a Super Center, while Edna’s Walmart was shut down.
1
Sounds like Edna will be fine. Nice article on a community recovery. Personally, I like Walmart stores and don't see them as an enemy at all. I have also read articles about the "backlash" on the various dollar stores, Nordstrom's, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Nike, and everything else in between. Oh, and Tesla of course as well.
We, as a country, sound spoiled and ridiculous at times.
76
@Mark
Thank you for expressing my sentiments. I shop at Walmart which has everything I need under one roof, and it employs many people who would otherwise be jobless for diverse reasons. Thousands of businesses pay employees far less than what they deserve. This is not a practice confined to Walmart.
And, yes, Edna survived. The small businesses went under to begin with not due to Walmart but due to townspeople dropping their allegiances to neighbors.
10
@HotGumption: You say, "...many people who would otherwise be jobless". How do you know that? Why wouldn't they be employed at the local businesses that were forced to close? You know, those local businesses who treat their employees as better than slaves, who pay local taxes, who made the downtown that so quickly disappeared.
Walmart, and all that it personifies including disturbing amount of wealth accumulated in the hands of a very few and the complete abandonment of local communities even when it exists in those communities, is the basic disease of American economics, and the laziness, indifference, selfishness and ignorance of the citizenry. I wouldn't spend your money there, much less my own.
12
@HotGumption
Because the practice isn't confined to Walmart does not alter the fact of its immorality and lack of concern for the welfare of its employees. No one who works 40 hours a week should be poor -- like Walmart workers -- and have to rely on food stamps or other public assistance to feed their kids. Walmart is heartless and a very bad corporate citizen. I will never set foot in one. Ever.
16
I NEVER shop at Walmart - ever.
10
I’m with you.
Same for Amazon.
2
Excellent story. Good job NYT!
Sad to read about the impact on this community.
However I am not surprised. When will people understand that corporations care only about their bottom line - not people, not the community. If you don't believe that take a quick look at Boeing. Over 400 people died because dollars were put on a higher level of importance than safety.
No one community should ever, and I mean ever rely solely on one single large employer.
8
NYT does it again and takes the residents of the coasts to middle America in thoughtful detail. I appreciate these stories and am glad America's newspaper is telling them.
22
Pitiful.
4
This situation is nothing new, in Texas or anywhere else Walmart has/had a store. I saw a story many years ago on 60 Minutes about the demise of small locally owned stores once Walmart comes in. The piece also showed what happens when the Walmart closes. When asked about it, the CEO could not have cared less or been more dismissive. I will not step foot in a Walmart to this day.
39
No surprises here. Walmart simply did what many other big companies have done in America. Walmart arrived, extracted as much value from Edna as it could, left when less value remained than could be extracted somewhere else. That the citizens of Edna looked upon their local Walmart as a benign entity that was the center of their community is laughably naive. It's called 'late-stage capitalism', and it cannot be fought against. Now that the employees have lost their jobs, they can be on fulltime welfare, not just partial assistance to fill in the missing money that Walmart workers need to get by in America.
38
I guessing that in the long run, losing this Walmart store will be the best thing to ever happen to Edna, Tx.
25
What I don't understand is why have sales tax numbers not provided in the article?
4
The StrongTowns organization has been writing about this sort of thing for years: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/3/3/the-walmart-trophy?rq=walmart. Big box stores have always been of less value than the mom-and-pop stores downtown. Maybe small-town America will finally start figuring that out.
16
Sell out your town's soul for the Walmart-China price manipulation and you expect sympathy when they make good on their fleece? Think again oh righteous ones.
14
@J
When Wal-mart first comes to a town their registers always have cashiers behind every one.Once Wal-Mart has driven out the competitors the lines get much longer as only some of the registers are open.They are also trying to push everybody into using self-check-outs.Being as I don't get paid by Wal-Mart I refuse to use the self check-outs.
35
@RJM I also refuse to use self-check outs at every store that has them. I'm not paid to bag my own groceries. Hire cashiers.
16
Not paid to bag your own groceries? It's beneath you? I'll bet you don't tip that minimum wage worker either, do you? I'd rather save the money from bagging my own stuff. Since you're so concerned about the workers, why not avoid WalMart and shop at Albertson's where you get 1/3 the groceries for twice the price.
3
This is what historically low unemployment rates and rising wages will do, and it, also, is why no Democrat currently in the race can beat Trump. Doesn't matter that he's a lousy president.
6
@August West It was the democrats, liberals and unions who pushed and achieved wage increases. There is massive unemployment for jobs that pay the bills.
11
@August West
Bush II also boasted historically low unemployment'. At least until it wasn't. Seems to happen with deficit spenders. Same as it will happen with Trump.
11
@Fatima Blunt
Sorry, the numbers don't lie, and this story appears to be true. You can't make something true by wishing it. Like it or not, the economy is thriving and wages are going up because of low unemployment that forces employers to pay more. And the number of unionized workers is a tiny fraction of the workforce.
I don't like Trump, either, but please don't shoot the messenger.
2
What struck me : population 5700 - churches 26.
Walmart survived, made $$$ and skipped town.
What about the churches?
26?
26
@Welcome Canada
Forget churches, this town still has a newspaper, one that has to worry about competitors and so hustled the Walmart-is-closing story into publication so it wouldn't get scooped.
Twenty-six churches. Folks who miss Walmart. Town doesn't take a financial hit when the store closes and no one ended up unemployed.
Perhaps it's time for some of us to start questioning assumptions and stereotypes.
9
@August West 2020 . . . don't forget to vote
7
@Welcome Canada I thought the same thing. Insane, no property tax there either! People can't get along so they start their own church. Well, more and more people are getting that many of these churches just want you to tithe and provide nothing in return. Believe me, I've seen it over and over in FL.
4
At least with the government you have some say. A corporation had the right to up and leave when they please.
3
The reason it didn’t effect the tax base is all their property values went up the day that Walmart closed.
13
I used to live in a small coastal town in North Carolina. There wasn’t much, but we still had a local pharmacy, grocery, and hardware store. Then Walmart built one of their Express stores. After six months, the pharmacy, grocery, and hardware stores were all closed. Then Walmart went through corporate restructuring deciding to close their Express locations, leaving us with nothing. Within one year, Walmart irrevocably damaged our town. These were not just business, but places were people came to socialize and feel part of a community.
132
Lots of urban hate here for a rural Walmart...how about doing that thing of walking in someone else's shoes for a while? Or else get a life, folks.
12
@Bbwalker
What urban hate? I don't see any. Are you paranoid or just jumping to your own biased conclusions?
17
Walmart, best place in the world to buy cheap junk from China.
25
@Doremus Jessup
No, Amazon takes that prize.
5
@Doremus Jessup Not necessarily. Cheap junk is everywhere. I go to Walmart 4 times a year to fill 3 generic prescriptions for $10 each. This is the only way many people can afford to fill their prescriptions.
4
The life of Edna circled around Walmart. It was Edna's soul and blood.
On a macro scale, it is similar to how our country had begun to wrap around China.
Our entire country would have gone through the agony that Edna did. Trump got us out.
History will judge that we, as a country, dodged a bullet.
Thanks to President Trump.
3
@Bhaskar
Please explain. Give details. I need to know how such a miraculous event occurs.
21
Oh, puh-leeze. Nothing positive can be attributed to that crook, regardless of what his gullible supporters think or say. It's time for a reality check, people.
26
One down, 312,882,884,982 to go.
13
Not sure why any town would regret losing a Walmart. They are messy, dirty and often sell inferior products. Their huge parking lots are impervious to drainage. Totally disgusting retailer.
28
Until a couple years ago I would avoid Walmart. The only ones in town are at the outskirts so it was easy to. However after seeing Amazon's grasp on the market especially during the gift buying season, I'd rather buy at Walmart than Amazon. Walking around the block it seemed every other house had an Amazon box on the door steps. So much waste.
6
So often lately I’ve been saying that Amazon is the new Wal-Mart. There’s a Wal-Mart about one mile from my home and in 20 years I can count the times I’ve been there on one hand. At least two of those times I came out empty handed. Thankfully we still have a locally owned hardware store in town that continues to fill my needs. Losing a Wal-Mart could bring about a downtown renaissance for Edna.
12
@Ahimsa
"So much waste."
As opposed to the waste of gas and time involved in driving to a Walmart and walking around for hours to find (or not) the items you need? And then having the stuff you bought put into plastic bags?
Corrugated cardboard is actually both reusable and recyclable, and at least where I live the delivery company trucks are already out there every day - and paying their employees way more than Walmart does.
Lots of WalMart hate in the comments. Where is the hate for Amazon? They’re destroying what’s left of retail with equally anticompetitive practices and are equally poor to their employees. It seems to me that if you hate one you have to hate the other...
30
@Perfect Commenter ...well, spread the hate, then! Don't be bashful, now.
11
@Perfect Commenter
Oh, I do! There are no Walmarts where I live (NYC), so that solves one problem. As far as Amazon goes, I only use them as a last resort when I can't find an item elsewhere. Luckily I have only had to do that about 4 times since Amazon came into existence, and returned two of those items, so I guess you can say I do fairly well without the twin evils of commerce. In my experience Amazon does not necessarily offer the best prices, so there is that as well.
3
@Perfect Commenter
Fair enough -- I have long despised Wal-Mart for many reasons and more lately, Amazon for essentially the same reasons-- ruin competition, expect too much of employees, overly dominant, two-faced, suffocating to local businesses and a long list.
Frankly, I can't imagine how any Wal-Mart would become the "life blood" of a community as it apparently did in Edna. I would be quite happy if both companies disappeared and locals came back as merchants.
9
I wouldn't shop at Walmart if the goods were free. That people were reduced to thinking of this store as the center of their community in so many ways is incredibly sad.
Order everything online and get your community from those 26 churches or by, you know, talking to your neighbors how about!
11
@Mr. Adams
I'd shop anywhere where the goods were free. Mama didn't raise no fool.
2
@Mr. Adams
Shoppers in Walmarts do talk to their neighbors who are also shopping there.
2
I still spend up to 30% more for groceries at my supermarket because it employs union workers. It's also next door to Target which half-heartedly sells food but sells some useful items cheaper than my supermarket or the chain drugstores. Don't need Walmart.
13
@ogn
As long as we had a unionized grocery store in town my wife and I only shopped there and never at Walmart.The unionized chain was bought out by a non-unionized chain who treat the workers as bad as Walmart treats theres.Living in a rural area we have no choice but to shop at Walmart or the other non union place.
3
Big box stores and malls killed downtowns, e-commerce is killing big box stores and malls, someday virtual reality will kill the need to buy anything. Can’t wait!
142
@Perfect Commenter
Not Virtual Reality, but 3D printing, and then one day someone will come up with a Star Trek like Replicator in every home.
11
@Perfect Commenter If we only purchased what we need instead of all the things we want, that would go a long way to saving both our sanity and the environment.
47
@Perfect Commenter Many town cores crumbled because they were no longer neighborhoods. Without residents, commerce slows after 17 o'clock, as all the workers go home. Down town used to have the good restaurants, the live entertainment, the bars, but without people living there, those establishments moved out to places with lots of parking.
Landlords refusing to update housing, lack of off-street parking, and the automobile are the more likely causes of small-town centers drying up. Then there is the decline of the family farm, and youngsters not wanting to stick around. Things change, that is the only thing that we can be sure of.
8
Wallmart comes in, wipes out the local merchants, puts a thousand people on public services such as EBT, and then pulls out because it is more profitable to force the locals to drive 25 miles to the next Wallmart.
Corrupt right wing politicians keep rural Texans destitute and stupid, and in return, rural Texans keep the corrupt right wing politicians in power.
98
@Morgan
Absolutely correct,but you'll never convinced the conned of your argument.Being made perfect patsies is a family tradition among them.
12
@Morgan : there is no evidence in this article that anyone was forced onto EBT (electronic benefits transfer, i.e., usually SNAP food stamps or TANF welfare).
They got OTHER jobs.
And it actually makes sense for Walmart to put stores in regional areas vs. "every small town". It was not some plot to simply "make locals drive further".
There are plenty of blue voters in Texas and many predict the state will turn blue in the next election.
Less than 6,000 people, and they have enough money for 26 churches?
31
In the South, there is a church and a gas station at every intersection.
6
@Bubo one Pentecostal Church just for you
1
Hey, as long as you have a post office, a Baptist church, and a Whataburger you have a town.
10
Walmart destroys local shops. Amazon destroys Walmart.
Who is next in line to be destroyed?
12
@Sirlar Amazon is pretty much the Walmart of the internet.
8
@Sirlar
Without Aldi and dollar stores, Walmart would have no competition. I wish Edna good luck and prosperity.
I used to think (hope) that telecommuting would help people move out of crowded cities. I guess not.
5
That is just not true. I can’t find many of the gluten free products at either Wal Mart or the locally owned shops in my town that my celiac disease requires me to buy (including specialty vitamins, as any medications I take have to be gluten free, and it’s no easy feat to find even common OTC products that are gluten free). Amazon allows me to locate and purchase these obscure items quickly and easily. Amazon is nothing like Wal Mart with its mainstream offerings. Many Amazon suppliers are small businesses, by the way.
6
No one mentions that some of u s are lucky enough to live in an urban environment and shop locally in brick and mortar- a win win win, especially if we walk to it all.
12
So much negativity about small towns here!
Small towns flourished as regional centers before autos, cheap gasoline, globalism and industrial monocrop agriculture deprived them of their inhabitants. Their denizens are not inherently stupid or worthless, but they’ve been heavily affected by things beyond their control.
It is possible to restore these communities and maybe the exit of Walmart and other corporate giants is a positive first step. Likewise a more broad-based regenerative agriculture instead of export monocrops, and some help from the government in them figuring out the best way to transition. Let’s include them, not scorn them.
Yeah, these people voted heavily for Trump, but they are still citizens and they still can make a contribution to the future.
17
@Stuart they have been scorning my family for 30 years. They have repeatedly told me my family aren't really citizens. I see no reason to help people who actively campaign to harm my family on a regular basis. They reliably and consistently vote to put people in charge of the laws with the expressed intent of telling others they aren't real Americans. Let them do something for the 30 years of scorn heaped upon the weak, poor, and marginalized of the country. They are reaping what they have wrought.
28
@Steve
Your post is very touching. I lived in the quintessential small town of the kind that draws scorn and now live in an urban area where people shun human contact. I miss that town so much I'm looking to return there. The transition was related to a change in employment.
1
@HotGumption why? Not enough Trump supporters around for you where you are now? Want to move back to live among like voting people? Yeah, I'm certain it is a great place to live if you bring the right complexion to the neighborhood. I also have lived in many small towns like Edna. They have been mocking and scorning people for their entire history. You just aren't one of the people they scorn so you ignore it and pretend they don't do it.
We can have efficiency or community - but we can't have both.
3
Living in a mid sized city(Tulsa, Okla), I have many choices. I have a Walmart five minutes from my home, and shop there sometimes, but also go to the local grocery chain that has successfully competed with quality service and product. A late friend said that Walmart provides a variety of products to people at a price they can afford. This is true, but in a city, other stores can compete. In a small market, there may not be enough room for both. It is sad, but the world changes, it always has, and always will. We must adjust.
6
WM. A blight on America
Just watch if you don’t understand
9
Being a Native Houstonian it saddens me that this was not from our local paper. Thank You Michael Corkery for an excellent story.
25
Enjoy buying stuff on Amazon? Like buying stuff on Walmart.com? Getting a ride with Uber? Paying for stuff and having them delivered the very same day? It is a nice thing we have going.
The problem? Look at the town of Edna. Where are all of these people going work? The town already has closed stores on main street- Thanks Walmart... A theater that is everything but a theater and a local lumber shop.
What happens when everything possible can be bought online?
We keep thinking that people like Trump are going to bring back all these high paying factory jobs-We all know better. Yet, I do have some good news! Soon you'll be able to pop down to your local store and have your clothing/shoes/all sorts of doodads custom-made- to fit your body and your needs- while you wait. Those factory jobs that once went to China and Mexico? Most of them will be coming back to the U.S.! It's always better to keep these things close at home- whenever possible.
BUT!
Most of those items -custom made!- will be done by a robot. All of those new factory jobs? They too will be given to robots. Automation, baby!
Soon millions of Chinese and Mexicans will join the ranks of millions of Americans who are now out of a job.
I just can't figure out who is going to be buying all of this new stuff when no one has a job...
35
@Allen Yeager
Did you read the story? Most everyone who worked at Walmart appears to have found employment elsewhere, a lumber store has taken over the old premises and the tax base wasn't affected.
I doubt you've been to Edna. I'll believe the reporter. Is it just me or have a few of these commenters overindulged in Christmas anti-cheer tonight?
3
Good riddance. I am so excited to see that someone opened an independent pharmacy, instead of just some CVS or Walgreens moving in.
America got along fine without these big box stores and the associated sprawl before, and with online shopping as the new sears catalog, I don't see why we need them now. They look even worse in Europe, where a big Carrefor (Kind of like a French Wal-Mart) just blights the otherwise nice landscape of some areas.
12
This is an example of crisis becoming an opportunity. Communities must come up regulations to prevent the next corporation from making such a one sided financial decision. People get hurt. Shame on my liberal friends who blame a community that’s been hit by today’s super capitalism. Most of these people support Trump as a way out of their misery, not out of principle. What have we Democrats given them?
4
@Daniel B
If you think the solution is communities coming up with regulations, then you don’t know much about Trump country. Everyone there knows that regulations kill jobs.
4
@kkseattle Regulations save lives, and keep the playing field fair. Not to mention keeping your environment cleaner which means healthier people. Spouting bumper sticker slogans doesn't help anything.
13
26 churches manage to eke out an existence In Edna but leadership decided it can’t survive with both a Walmart and HEB.
5
A question asked in a few comments is where have the customers gone? I work in the retail real estate sector and this is an answerable question. I enjoyed the article and am happy to share come insight with NYT readers.
About one-half of the foot traffic that was visiting the Edna Walmart has split between the H-E-B grocery in Edna, and the Walmart in El Campo, on US 59 heading toward Houston. It also appears that a lesser number of customers now head to the bigger Supercenter in Victoria.
H-E-B also opened a new pharmacy in October 2018, likely in response to Walmart's closing. For every window shut, another opens.
Happy holidays to all.
24
@Bill
Don't worry - Amazon will kill off those retail outlets soon.
2
Walmart's long-term planning for small towns is generally poor. They first ran out small retailers and got local tax breaks.
They then built a store in our community that is sized for a customer base of 200,000 but at peak season our town has only 35,000 people. To adjust for their errors they employee nearly everyone on a part-time basis but with no set work schedules so it's difficult for them to hold a second job. And the pay is only $10.50-$11 per hour. Then to reduce cost, after they announced a $1000 bonus- which most employees did not get-they added 12-14 self checkout machines and laid-off a number of employees. Stock keeping is done mostly on the midnight shift so during the day there are many empty shelves. Yesterday at 2 PM there were only 5 or 6 bags of 5 lb sugar in the store. I've seen this same scenario in many "small-town" Walmarts.
15
Yes, but they aren’t planning for the towns, are they?
1
Put all your eggs in one basket America. What's more important? - The themes in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE - in which it is pointed out that our security and prosperity is wrapped up in each and every member of our own community's success, or in getting a few cents better from a big corporate monopoly with no skin in the game and nothing but profit in mind. You asked for this. You got it.
28
Before Amazon did its number on brick-and-mortar retail stores and, particularly, book stores, Walmart was the arch-villain. More small retailers probably have closed their doors because of Walmart and, later, the more upscale Costco, than because of Amazon, although Amazon has not hit its peak.
There are other “bad guys” in the picture. In small towns, locally own pharmacies shut their doors when CVS and Walgreen’s moved in.
Whose fault is all of this? It’s our fault, the customers who made the short-sighted decision to save $15 and put a local business out of business.
The irony is that for every $15 saved, we spend another $20 buying something we do not need and do not really want.
13
@sdw Who is forcing anyone to spend $20 buying something they didn't need and don't want?
In all of my experiences with Walmart and Amazon neither has ever held a gun to my head and forced me to buy anything I didn't want.
True, sometimes they, esp Amazon, offer more selection and I will buy something that I want but simply wasn't available in "mom-and-pop" type stores with more limited selection - but that doesn't mean I didn't want it.
8
@Bob Richards
No need to be defensive. It is not a sin to fall for a splashy display at Walmart or on the Amazon website. It does not doom you for eternity to partake of the "special sale" items by the checkout lines at CVS or Walgreen's. Relax, Bob Richards, take off the dark glasses and shop.
3
@sdw I would love to be able to use a local pharmacy, but my Medicare prescription plan has a contract with CVS, so I'm forced to get my prescriptions there. It stinks, but I don't see an alternative.
The good people of Edna with their 26 churches voted for Trump and Ted Cruz by 60 points! Then trump gave Walmart a humongous tax break and what did they do? Closed less profitable stores like.....Edna!
It’s never enough and no sense of community responsibility which is why we need to stop voting republican.
315
Great article
3
“God will find a way to provide what you need,” Mr. Schroer wrote of the store’s closing. “You will live through it. You will live beyond it.”
I find such theology to be shameful. There are many Christians and people of other faiths who have died horrible deaths while praying for divine intervention.
Weren't those people loved enough by God, Mr. Schroer?
55
What stores were there before the Wal*Mart?
Across the country small towns have lost their locally-owned businesses to this chain.
They aren’t coming back.
10
@Carmine Actually, from this article, small businesses DO seem to be coming back. Good on ‘em. Let’s hope more Walmart’s close and their townspeople step up to the challenge. Could be the saving of small-town America.
5
“God will find a way to provide what you need,” - the reliance on this kind of logic is the reason why places with 26 churches like Edna have as their »economic engine » and « 24 hr social hub » a Walmart. They were doomed before Walmart ever moved in. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
39
I find it somewhat amusing (but also somewhat sad) that people in Edna feel "betrayed" by Walmart.
Did they actually think that Walmart had come to their town to be a beneficent economic engine? Did they actually think that Walmart came there to give them civic pride, to be an anchor of their community?
If they did actually think these things, then they deserve to actually be betrayed (and not just feel it), because they need to learn some hard lessons about how the world of capitalism, corporate largesse, and trickle-down economics works.
They need to learn these hard lessons because they keep voting for people (and the party) that favors businesses like Walmart (and their rich owners who don't care at all about the welfare of the people in the towns where they build their stores). Maybe if they get "betrayed" and burned enough times they'll learn to stop voting for Republicans.
But then again, that's highly unlikely, because as Pastor Schroer said: “God provided. I truly believe that.”
Well, if they believe that God was tracking the plight of the denizens of Edna and actually interceded on their behalf, then trying to explain the downsides of capitalism to them probably won't go very far.
Keep voting Republican; maybe they'll give you another plastics factory (while they take away your ACA healthcare).
210
@Paul-A
In case you hadn’t noticed, the Democrats long ago abandoned more than lip service to labor.
AND they think the people of Edna are ‘deplorables’. So said their last candidate. (Yeah I realize she did not mention Edna, Texas by name.)
So maybe the Democrats should recognize the changes they need to make to recover some of the votes they threw away .
11
@Paul-A I enjoyed reading your post. I'm pro union and vote Democrat. Yet the Democratic party ( on the National level) has not been there for the working class.
13
@zauhar Three years later you're still taking the "deplorables" comment out of context. It can't be because there's no way to find out what she actually said. It must be because you want to push a false narrative. It's your kind of thinking that's dividing our nation.
https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/
39
On the surface, Walmart is the large, visible target for critics to point to when describing the hollowing out of America. In fact, Walmart is an interchangeable character in the story of rural communities facing insolvency.
Investment in education and infrastructure at a local, state, and federal level is not only sorely lacking, what resources are available are divided disproportionately between rural and urban areas.
Our country has created third-world communities within a first-world nation.
42
A community of 5,700 and 26 churches! That's a lot of pews to fill every Sunday.
14
@jmilovich We have less than 2000 people here, and 13 churches. Last time I counted anyway. We make Edna look agnostic, at least
6
@jmilovich Welcome to Tx.
1
@jmilovich
no one said they were full
Makes me want to move to Edna.
7
American consumers decide from whom they will buy.
4
If people would shop locally, there would be no Walmart and a real town would survive. This is, of course, assuming you can afford it. With billionaires taking in all the money, many people can't.
But if you can, do it. Isn't it worth a few more dollars to keep your town and its people?
There is a Walmart in my town. I have been there maybe five times, when no other store had what I wanted. One item and out.
As this article shows, it's never too late. Boycott Walmart and your town can regain its stores and life.
Happy Holidays to all.
48
@akamai : OK, but do you tell that to those folks who shop at Amazon????
Because it's the same thing, only online. And it is destroying communities, malls, stores, etc. all over the US and much of the world.
If you only say to Walmart shoppers, but give Amazon shoppers a "pass"….you are a hypocrite.
But by all means, keep voting Republican! It's doing you a world of good, isn't it?
49
Somebody call Alanis Morrisette. Here’s an example of irony: Walmart, destroyer of “small town commerce”, is itself destroyed by “no town commerce”.
6
A perfect story of small town ‘resilience’ in the face of corporate muscle-flexing to warm the hearts before the holidays.
Long live the American entrepreneurial spirit!
7
Something is amiss in this article. Walmart simply does NOT close stores. When they do, it's because of the real threat of a Union coming in victoriously in a pro-Union vote among it's workers for that store. It's happened that way in the past, but the excuse has always been, 'they were going to close it anyway', etc. The writer of this piece says that 'they reached out to Walmart for an answer but Walmart didn't want to reply'. Or words to that effect. Nowhere in the article is there even the slightest, faintest hint that THAT could be a reason. Since NO reasons were given by the writer, I'm going to factor in 'Union' as a distinct possiblility.
14
With a population of under 6,000 and other Walmarts within 25 miles, an aging store (size and features) may not be losing money but compared to Super Centers, has much smaller returns for the effort.
20
For goodness sakes, a union shop in Trump-voting, right-to-work Texas? No, believe me, Walmart did not leave Edna, running away from the threat of unionization.
16
@david
Walmart DOES close stores. They closed two here three years ago and built a single bigger one (and a Sam's) a few miles away.
Shame on them and their anti-union ways.
4
Nice holiday story, lovely photographs
7
Edna should be proud that it can survive and rebuild after this economic setback. Anyway, who needs Walmart? I frankly think it is a lousy store. I hope these fine people can regain their local character.
17
I have watched WalMart destroy “downtowns” and kill off competitors by offering cheap, inexpensive goods mostly made outside the US. Shopping at WalMart is interesting: I never seem to get exactly what I’m looking for but I usually find something inexpensive that’s close to what I originally wanted. Good luck, Edna, you’ll do just fine without WalMart telling you what you want.
19
@Larry : Walmart did not invent "Made in China" and frankly, I'd love to see what stores you think are selling goods that are NOT made in China or some similar third world hellhole.
Almost the only way to buy "Made in America" today is to buy vintage at thrift stores or rummage sales.
Here in Nelson many people don't like the presence of Walmart. In fact, some citizens bought land on which Walmart had planned to expand its current store, thus preventing the move.
In fact we pride ourselves in keeping out the big corporations. The only fast food joints here are A&W and Subway (which at least sells healthy food and is relatively discreet in appearance).
10
@Ambrose : Nelson is a tourism-based, chi-chi, very expensive town that caters to the ski industry and vacationers.
It's not a good example of a typical small Canadian town.
(What little most Americans know of Nelson comes from the 1987 film "Roxanne" with Steve Martin.)
I once remarked to a colleague that I thought that economic efficiency is vastly over-rated. He responded with shock that I would blaspheme against the revealed doctrine of the University of Chicago Holy Prophets of Mammon. I think I nailed it.
13
Sad but many small towns cannot survive in the era of Walmart and Amazon. I’m from a small town which is thriving because it discovered the winery business after the mill closed down. Some other towns do not have the resources or ability to grow. If a town has to depend this much on having a Walmart, it’s already in trouble.
8
There is another story about Walmart. The low prices they offer come at the expense of American jobs. Those low prices are possible because of foreign labor, first Japanese in the Fifties and Sixties, then Chinese, and then from other "emerging nations." Many of the products they produce so cheaply were previously produced here. We blithely buy Toyotas, for example, and wonder why areas of Michigan have been devastated for decades. I would guess 50% or more of the products we buy on Amazon or in Walmart are produced by foreign labor. So yes, closing the Edna store had a profound local impact, but so did those low prices offered when the store was open--lost local jobs and local businesses. Was it worth it?
18
@Traveler1t
It is a bit more complicated. Honda and Toyota are now the most "American" of US brands, in terms of the US content of their cars sold here. Of the 15 "most American" cars, seven are from Honda and two from Toyota. See here: https://www.cars.com/articles/cars-coms-2019-american-made-index-whats-the-most-american-car-404547/
15
@Traveler1t
You know Toyota (and other foreign auto makers) has plants in the USA? In Kentucky, Indiana, Mississippi, and Texas. We are buying Toyotas made in the USA. And many products have supply chains that are global.
12
@Traveler1t
The current auto industry, despite common perception, is not a particularly good example. A glance at many Toyota window stickers (Camry in particular) indicates US made. The largest BMW factory in the world is in South Carolina and most of those vehicles are exported worldwide. If one was to worry, however, that would be to wonder why US workers building the BMW's earn about 1/3rd that of their German counterparts.
13
Walmart giveth, Walmart taketh away. When they arrived, I am certain, as the article indicated, that local businesses were squeezed to death in many cases. Now that they have left locals are on the ascent. Costs and consumer preferences for low prices seem to drive everything and I don't see that changing.
7
Walmart jilted Edna, but Edna refused to give in to despair and moved on. It was hard at first, but now life is better. Sounds like the makings for a a good country tune.
Of course, everybody really knows that Edna is better off without Walmart. Smaller local stores are coming back, and what you can't get there is available online. That's actually not a bad combination -- buy whatever you can from local retailers and backfill the specialty items from online sources.
10
So Walmart doesn't provide much value after all. Take heed, Walmart shoppers.
14
This story hits real close to home. For one thing, I grew up in a town barely more than spittin' distance from Edna. For another, my daddy was a small time entrepreneur who owned, with a brother, "five and dime stores" in three small Texas towns. Our home store in Bay City opened in 1935, five years before I was born. It did well until the late 40's, when not one, but two, better capitalized chains moved into town. When Daddy--an east Texas farm boy--saw the chance to buy 400 acres of good creek bottom land he decided to become a shirt-tail cattle rancher. Seemed like a great idea to everyone except my mother, who saw the new house she had been promised during WWII, vanishing like a mirage. At 9 years old, I was thrilled that I could have a horse! We did not, of course, have a crystal ball to show us the legendary drouth of the 1950's hovering on the horizon. Selling out our stores was a long and arduous process. As a teenager, I worked as a clerk, bored by the lack of customers, embarrassed to turn those still faithful away empty handed as stock dwindled. When Daddy (reluctantly!) obtained a government loan to finally build Mother her house, he had to report to an agent in--yes, Edna! An old woman now, I have lived to see the chains that drove Daddy out of the mercantile business suffer the same fate, struggling against Walmart's superior capitalization. You can guess. My heart is still with the local small guys.
45
Walmart is so poisonous. Tragic that people like it and miss it. Hurray for the small businesses coming back to fill the void.
19
Great photographs!
6
@Profbart
Agreed! NYT has the greatest photogs and graphic artists in the world. They deserve more recognition.
3
Ah Republicans complaining about big business, you can’t make this up. Well at least they have “God” to help them.
43
So Walmart’s the bad guy despite delivering superior products for lower prices for decades? How many dissenters ordered gifts for their loved ones from Amazon for half the price? Or who sent messages over Facebook for free? Please, save me the grief.
11
@WL Superior products? What were you used to buying before there was Wal-Mart?
I have a friend who lives in Rural NC. Walmart came in and the local supermarket eventually closed. Then Walmart closed and left the town with nothing.
I have a Walmart near me in suburban NJ. I won’t set foot in the place or spend a dime there.
26
That's why national retailers are NOT good for the country. They will move in, destroy your local, your 'Mom and Pop' stores, and they'll leave you in a heartbeat if their bean-counters say they can save a nickel if they close your store.
It is not uncommon.
Support your local stores, farmers, crafts, and more. Even if you have to pay a few dollars more, that is money that stays in your community, and likely, it makes its way back to you in some way (e.g., we have a local bank that pumps lots of money into the local scene; I wouldn't bank anywhere else).
42
Edna is the county seat of Jackson County TX. In 2018 Jackson county chose cruz over O'Rourke by 65 points in 2018 In 2016 they cast their lot with trump by a 60 point margin.
Can't help but think of the parallels between trump's tax cut to make big corporations richer and Walmart's financial decision. Both trickled down coal on the residents of Edna.
246
@Lawrence: Edna has reaped what it sowed.
14
@Pam Shira Fleetman
But Edna appears to be doing just fine, according to the story. Is anyone reading the story? My gosh. All these comments predicated on Edna going down the tubes when the story shows it's the exact opposite.
I wonder what folks in Edna, reading the comments on this thread, are saying to each other about liberals who read the NYT but can't appear to grasp the story's point.
7
@August West
We grasp the story's point just fine. As clearly stated, the sudden loss of Walmart was a blow to the community. We are very glad the town's tax revenue has dipped only slightly, but that only tells part of the story. How do people's incomes compare? Sounds like more people have to commute to other towns for work. And when Walmart came to town, it drove out a pharmacy, grocers, food and clothing stores. The point is, Walmart hurts both coming and going. One needn't be a "liberal" to glean that.
7
We lived in Nicholson pa Northeast pa from 1970 -89. We moved to Rehoboth ,De in 1989 . Walmart moved in to Tunkhannock pa around 1991 and Nicholson’s two main grocery stores closed down for good. Now Nicholson is just a place to live and die. If you are a senior and no car Tunkhannock is 15 miles away, Rural communities need to close down. You get old to quick in your towns and when the cold and long snow season comes. If Trump get elected again he wants to shut down your rural mail so you may to go many miles for it . You will reap what you sow. Country living is dieing.
23
I grew up nearby in Victoria. I remember when Walmart first came to the area. I remember small businesses closing downtown and in the smaller towns in the area. The local consumers were lured in by the lower prices. They are good people and they believed in Walmart. People spoke of it in familial terms. Unfortunately the people of Edna have been betrayed. They have clearly left expecting the good people of Edna to drive a half hour or more to shop. Kudos to those who have made the efforts to avoid shopping at Walmart. The surrounding communities should think about what Walmart has done and where they are spending their money. Who will be next?
55
Whether we like it or not, the world keeps changing.
Before the industrial revolution, maybe 90% of Americans lived in rural communities.
I was lucky to make a career in IT but I have moved several times in my career.
14
In a decade (or less) there will be stories like this about Amazon. Unless they simply, as they wish to do, take over the world and we'll all be slaves to Amazon.
6
@A2er I live in a rural community with few shopping choices, and have come to dread the trek into the nearest city, ~35 minutes away. For those reasons I'm rather fond of the convenience and ease of shopping at Amazon from the chair upon which I'm currently sitting.
15
There are already stories like this about Amazon. For example when a warehouse leaves a town. If you are interested I’d recommend the Land of giants podcast as it talks about the devastating effects that closing a warehouse , one of its first, had on a community.
In a way its similar to other industries, such as when mines close. Some places recover others find it more difficult.
10
I grew up in a small town and have lived in in suburban communities throughout adulthood. Shopping is a choice. You don't have to go to a Walmart, you can choose whether to shop online, you can drive to a town to shop.
2
For the small towns in America that are floundering, there is a shot at success for determined, creative entrepreneurs who can spot a niche marketing opportunity and grow it far beyond their city limits. A case in point is the Missouri Star Quilt Co. of Hamilton, Missouri, which has staked out a nationwide presence while reviving a moribund village in the U.S. heartland. Could Edna become the next Hamilton?
https://www.forbes.com/feature/missouri-star-quilting/#5e610ba77486
3
The solution to events like this, imo, lies in an admittedly radical change in American corporation law. Congress should preempt state-chartered interstate corporations with a new national corporation law—one which requires corporate duties not only to stockholders, but also to employees, customers and the communities where the company operates. No chance this will happen in the foreseeable future—but it is a way to create more publicly responsible corporations that spreads the benefits of capitalism far more broadly.
37
This is a difficult reminder of why we need small businesses. And now with the Walmart gone from this town, small business will have breathing room again. It will take a while to rebuild the stores, like a forest that has been clear cut and left to regrow naturally. I go out of my way to not shop at Walmart and to use local pharmacies, clothing shops, groceries, and the like. These small local stores together give the economy more stability than a big blockbuster ever could and unlike a blockbuster, small stores are invested in the community as long as we invest in them.
41
@sarah - :)) You would have to go out of your way to shop AT a Walmart since there isn't one in Seattle city limits. I have never been inside a Walmart.
4
It’s not to hard to leave Seattle too shop or continue to buy third party fake products cheap from A
It would have been nice if you'd focused more on the positive changes in Edna that you just hinted about in a single sentence. Why Walmart left seems like less the story than the effect on the town. Just my opinion.
7
The city has 5,700 residents and 26 churches.
Not sure what that indicates.
63
@Independent I thought that was quite remarkable as well.
19
@Independent - "Not sure what that indicates."
Well, its just more proof that prayer doesn't work or the Walmart would still be in Edna.
18
@Independent Where I grew up, in Northern Ontario, there were 20 churches and 20 bars or so in a town of 20,000. It was a proper balance of the pious and the profane.
10
If they've still got a What-a-Burger, they're ahead of the game!
15
While interesting, this article completely fails to mention Edna has an HEB which I imagine has the same sense of community the Walmart had.
13
@Sean - I was going to comment on having HEB move in and take over. We have lived here for 21 years and always shop at HEB. Thanks for mentioning.
3
Yes, there is an H.E.B., and yes, there is the same sense of community there.
It's nice to have a grocery store to shop at without having to drive 25 miles to do so.
But that is not the point.
H.E.B. does not carry the same products as wm. Nor are they ooen 24 hours a day.
4
@Sean What is an HEB?
3
Shoppers idling in the parking lot, no less scrolling through Facebook or some other social media garbage, waiting for their avocados that they ordered on their phone to be brought to them in their cars pretty much sums it up. The corporatocracy that we are living under is turning America into a social and environmental wasteland.
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@Layton Register
This is why so many Americans are overweight.
I park as far away from the store entrance as possible.
Exercise and fewer scratches on the car.
17
Great, a story about a store that sells and spurred on the materialistic American culture that accepts as a given that most everything this store sells is made in China. That with that real actual jobs that can sustain an American family left America and left nothing but retail jobs selling Chinese made cheap items and trinkets. And this was brought on by GOP, Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, etc and centrist Democrats like Clinton. And most Americans just accept it. They accept that most every country has a trade imbalance with America and we accept that. We as Americans lie to each other everyday and we continue to consume these Chinese trinkets. We are not a smart proud people, we are stupid and accept lies that we think will make our life better. We have to really stop and think about how we vote and shop. Shop with our future in mind. Just some thoughts for my American Brothers and Sisters to think about.
22
These events will NOT make communities stronger until we realize the underpinnings of what is broken across this country in many sectors of the economy - not just retail. Rural hospital health is becoming an oxymoron. Why? Profit & dividend returns for corporations & the richest.
In April 2019 Walmart announced the introduction of robots in 5,000+ stores with more on the horizon. By Feb. 2020 they will have more than 8,000 robots performing janitorial services, shelf-inventory, and delivery sorting. That's just the 'trial phase' folks! The robot jobs will 'replace' (such a sterile word for human job loss) humans. Granted there will be humans, for now, who will service the automation & Walmart has argued the net employment will greater. But, if you believe that you probably believe Trump is 'draining the swamp'. And, that's only a chapter in this book of flawed capitalism. The book is about maximizing profit in all areas of our lives in the USA and justifying any action in the name of that profit.
What the heck are we doing? We're profiting off of human suffering in our health care? We're giving proportionally greater & greater tax breaks to corporations and the richest while city govt. destroys shelters homeless men, women, and children try to create?
And as inequality grows so goes our dignity, love, caring, and concern along the way. Enter despair, disregard, & hate as people struggle to survive. We're allowing our economic model to destroy quality of life for profit.
45
@Chris Koz
Look around at the faces you see, you have shown their hearts, sadness.
2
26chuches and only one grocer. Something seems out of balance. Dollar stores are designed to make a huge profit off of extremely low quality products and deceptive packaging.
Could zoning or other city ordinances limit the size of employers so that if a business closes it would not take the town down with it? The closing of the EDNA theater meant the loss of perhaps five jobs and the existence of the town was not threatened. Taking on a single large employer puts everything at risk.
19
Walmart wreaked havoc on the fragile economies of small towns In the 1980s, causing the death of the locally owned businesses that had been the mainstays of main streets for hundreds of years. And, as you may recall, the big pitch from Walmart was its “MADE IN AMERICA” merchandise. Once all of the locally owned businesses folded, Walmart was king. The towns’ character changed because the local entrepreneurs were gone. I congratulate this Texas town for weathering the storm. There are other communities across America with similar experiences that were bowled over by Walmart, only to be devastated when the so-called purveyor of made in America products pulled up stakes and moved on.
22
@Gene Reed
I had an interesting conversation with someone from upstate NY.
He and his neighbors were thrilled when Walmart showed up. He felt that the small storeowners in the local towns and villages had high prices and limited variety in the goods they carried. I expect it was easy for Walmart to put most of those places out of business since Walmart prices could be so much lower.
I'm not sure how they felt when it closed down.
5
Walmart has some of the lowest margins on goods imaginable. They can out compete almost any local store. The fact that they could not maintain a profit says it all. No one is moving to this small town. It's just going to get smaller and older and poorer and the preacher will keep preaching to his ever aging parish that 'God will see them through' even as every young person leaves for a place with actual economic opportunity. You know who would move their? Young immigrants looking for any kind of work. The author's conclusions are premature and almost as delusional as the preacher quoted in the story.
20
@Steve Undoubtedly the Edna store was profitable. But closing it and divvying up its sales among the super centers, or simply investing more in the super centers, was deemed more profitable. It is about more, not some.
7
@Art in the business world 'not maintaining a profit' is always the same as 'not large enough profit'. Businesses are almost never closed because they are actually insolvent. It's almost always because they can make a higher profit elsewhere. The effect will be the same.
1
I know what I’m about to say is not popular to most people [yet]. I studied town planning in college. I continue to be intrigued by how a community becomes a community and what are the ingredients that make one successful while another fails. With populations in decline, immigration slowing rapidly, good jobs being centered around education hubs, young people moving away, the future of farms trending toward smaller farms to support local areas, the soon-to-be hyper growth in plant based meats, the destruction of wildlife and wildlife habitats across the country, the increase in robotics, and the cost of living becoming out of reach for most all are the ingredients that will kill small towns for good.
We need a radically altered planning and zoning renaissance in our country. These small towns all across america that can no longer support fire, police, library, post office, infrastructure and a basic economy really, need to be given back to the earth. Relocate the people, to nearby medium sized towns/cities and let Mother Nature take back the land. It’s going to happen anyway, the Government should proactively do it before they fall into total disrepair, addiction and need to be subsidized.
30
Marcus, just so you know, Vermont is not on the coast. Whether or not “they like it there” or not, isn’t really relevant. We don’t want communities to fail and people to be destitute, and thats what will happen. It’s as obvious as anything can be. And why is it our collective responsibility to subsidize them when they are? Being proactive to address problems before they become a crisis and making hard decisions like this one, is what politicians used to be elected for.
15
@Dan : Odd that you study this, but do not recognize that some groups do not want police, fire, hospitals, schools, etc. and will vote over and over not to have any of that.
3
@gratis. People would vote against healthcare, insurance, road repairs, sewage, clean water etc. It’s because Americans are so short sided they only think about the now. “My house isn’t on fire today, why should i pay for those expensive fire trucks!” “I can defend myself with by shotgun, I don’t need police!” Until they do. Then they sue the town because they didn’t have a police dept. This is the thinking that got us trump. The lunatics are running the asylum.
7
Big box stores killed local small business and the middle class they represented. Glad to see a positive post Walmart recovery story.
17
The photos in this article are amazing. The portraits seem to let us see the people clearly.
Every one of them is a gem.
Thank you
54
This is so great to hear, I am so happy for the town called Edna. I had just heard more details about how the Walmart business plan destroyed local business and our tax money was used to make up the difference between their paying workers as little as possible and not give benefits. And yet this Walmart family I think is one of the three families that Bernie says has more wealth than all of the lower 40 percent of us combined. Such great Americans gaming the system and using our tax money to get so awfully rich. I think I read that when they hired you they gave you the forms to get food stamps if not other government aid. Nope they could not be budged to actually pay their employees a living wage. That may be changing I think I heard after Bezos was shamed and made to raise his wages to 15 dollars an hour. Anyway I think when Walmart leaves anywhere it will be a blessing and towns will thrive in a better way. Really how many billions does one family need at our expanse?
36
Here in Reno there are several Wal-Marts. About 10 years ago K-Mart decided they needed a presence. They went after local government for re-zoning, fought residents who didn't want a huge big box store in their neighborhood, sued to get their way. Today that big box stands empty, K-Mart having closed their super store for lack of business, leaving the neighborhood with a big, ugly vacant skeleton. Why? Whoever was in charge of all the planning for K--Mart didn't bother to look at logistics, how difficult it was going to be for people to get there from wherever they were. Access was a nightmare maze to be run through residential streets. Sure, the store was visible from the freeway, but almost impossible to access if you didn't have experience. With Wal-Marts so easily reachable, no one shopped there. It was one big "duh".
6
Even the residents of the high plains dust bowl of the 1930s knew when it was time to move on.
Until small town, rural people learn to accept there is no there, there anymore, we will continue to see/hear stories about the raw deal the "forgotten man" is getting and that will feed the cult of grievance and victim hood that fuels some many of the divides in America today.
35
@Paul, try moving on with little money to areas with jobs—but no affordable housing. Try living somewhere with no friends or neighbors to help when you hit trouble. Easy to say when you don’t care about the facts, right?
4
I know that Walmart is not known for compensating employees generously, but I have to wonder: Those employees of the mom-and-pop retailers put out of business -- how well were they paid?
I observed a slightly similar situation when I lived briefly in a Mexican town popular with American ex-pats. Word got out that Starbucks would be opening a store on the main plaza. A great hue and cry emerged, largely from those ex-pats, that locally owned cafes would be damaged. The owners of those locally owned cafes joined in.
The employees of those locally owned cafes did not. They were delighted to have a big-pocket employer competing for their labor.
I do not know what happened eventually. I do remember the Starbucks packed to the gills with tourists from Mexico City. Those tourists couldn’t sleep at the Starbucks, or enjoy a formal meal there; perhaps they spent their pesos at a few locally owned businesses?
7
@Marty : Mom and Pop businesses have to make money for their owners or they will go under. And they are not government subsidized in the massive way Walmart is.
4
The issues with Walmart leaving Edna are similar to issues generated when large manufacturing plants leave large cities and send their business abroad, to plants in China for example. The process is the same and rooted in capitalism. How many plants (jobs) has Trump brought back to America after promising voters that he would do so? Edna has weathered its economic storm for now, which is great for Edna. However, the large-scale loss of manufacturing jobs has not been compensated for to the same degree. The Edna situation can and will happen again.
16
More likely, other long term and wider factors such as the global economy and local decisions affected job losses and gains more.
Just a suggestion but maybe it would be better to focus on those instead of throwing mud at each other
2
You mean the ones that BUSH lost, of course.
4
@Jackson
I believe you meant to say Bush. You know, that whole financial crisis bit on his watch.
5
At least the Waltons are super-generous themselves. NOT.
The combined lifetime contributions of the second generation Walmart heirs and their family holding company to the Walton Family Foundation come to $58.49 million, or about .04% of the Waltons’ net worth of $139.9 billion. Lots of money to be made in destroying the retailers and grocery stores in downtowns across the nation.
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@The Perspective
Yep - more plutocrats decimating the middle class and concentrating wealth in their own pocket.
But don't get carried away with the charity escape - people who suck the middle class dry and give back 1% in the form of a library with their name on it.
20
I am old enough to remember small grocery stores, local hardware stores and other such businesses. Yes, for a small town a Walmart is a boon. Here is a lesson about the devastation Walmart can leave behind.
So to all those capitalists out there, those who hate "liberals," how about you explain how unfettered capitalism is good.
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@Jackson Sounds like a lot of unmet demand wherever you're from. Capitalism hates a vacuum and the opportunity for profit on the other days and nights would have found many salivating entrepreneurs. If they didn't appear, something is wrong with capitalism in that town
3
@bresson Yeah, the people there didn't want to work themselves to death every day of the week for your convenience. When I visited Germany many years ago, stores were closed on Sunday. People bought what they need on Saturday. Something wrong with capitalism in that place.
1
@Jackson
it was great
Small town America has been in a decline over the last few decades however the decline has turned into a collapse over the last 2 years. Why? Probably farm prices. The trade war has devastated rural America.
17
Firstly, thanks for this article! Living here in NYC also means that I need more, not less information on what's going on in so-called rural America. So, thanks, and more of that, please!
Regarding the town of Edna, and how they coped with the loss of their main retailer and the associated jobs: I agree that Edna did well; however, and it's a bit glossed over, they also had other, large employers either in town or close by, and thus weren't flat on their back when Walmart just up and left with little notice. That, I believe, is an important lesson for towns and cities big and small: diversify your economy however you can, so a move like that might hurt, but it won't kill you. Glad that Edna did come out okay.
50
I used to hear the same thing about a departing army or air force base. But also heard the same story of how the town/city repurposed itself.
6
@Laurie
Great. Doesn't kill the economic pain.
1
Everything has a life span and one of these first Walmart’s has outlived its. I can remember in 1941 driving 25 miles to go shopping every Saturday night. Besides with Amazon Prime why even leave home.
9
The good people of Edna turned their back on their local store owners in order to make billionaires richer and save a few pennies.
Now they turn to other multi-billion-dollar corporations -- Dollar General and Family Dollar -- to help pick up the pieces.
How 'bout they pull up their bootstraps, and open and support local businesses -- and their own community -- for a change?
75
@Michael-in-Vegas Do keep in mind that Walmart was MUCH smaller in 1982 - they had 491 stores and only operated in 13 states. Now, the have about 4,800 stores in the US and about 12,000 worldwide.
By contrast, KMart had over 2000 stores in 1982.
So, in 1981/1982, it wasn't so obvious that Walmart was going to become the superpower that it is.
Having watched both from afar (working for a company that provided innovative computer systems to both) during that general era, it was clear that Walmart was the more efficient and forward thinking of the two companies.
12
@Michael-in-Vegas Small independent retail stores cannot buy many of the name brand items that large chains carry. The suppliers will not sell small quantities of specific items at low enough wholesale prices for a small retailer to even stock the shelves, much less compete with WalMart or Amazon.
14
Walmart bad opening in small towns. Walmart bad for leaving small towns. Can’t have it both ways.
16
@KJ
Yes you can.
It's bad coming in because it destroys most of the local economy. It's bad going out, because it destroyed the local economy.
This report is here because it's unusual. Most towns have problems rebounding. Some don't
59
@KJ Yes you can:
Walmart comes into a town and puts small business out of business. That's bad.
Walmart shuts down a while later, leaving people unemployed and having to travel further to shop. That's bad.
43
@Glenda They haven't rebounded yet. Just stuck in place.
5
Have you been in a Walmart lately? The workers look absolutely miserable. The only smiling faces associated with Walmart are the ones in the commercials. Amazon and Walmart want nothing more than to extract wealth from communities so that people feel they don't have an alternative. It's a race to the bottom, and the people who make, sell, and buy the products suffer.
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@M At my local Walmart the workers seem reasonably happy. So, YMMV.
5
@M
I noticed that Walmart hired a cashier with severe facial scarring. I wonder if Macy's would give her a job no matter how much she smiled.
13
The Walmart giveth, the Walmart taketh away....
It's good that the people of Edna have regrouped, but the national problems of underemployment and food deserts remain.
19
Before Walmart or any other big, national retailer gets the go ahead to open a location in a small town, they should sign an exit agreement. They should have to: agree to pay a severance to employees harmed by a store closing, agree to announce a closing at least 60 days in advance, give an official reason for the closing, etc. These corporations have an outsized affect on small towns like Edna. They need to be good neighbors.
227
@Mitch And, in most cases, a small town or at least county is free to set those conditions before issuing a business license or a building permit. Their choice.
And, note that when Walmart built this store, Walmart had less than 500 stores in 13 states. They now have over 11,000 stores worldwide. KMart, for example, had many more stores at that time. It was not obvious that Walmart would grow to the size it is today (they did so because they focus on offering low prices and being efficient while not nickle and diming when it comes to innovation and store upgrades - unlike, for example, KMart and Sears). So, perhaps every retailer that hires even one person outside of family should have to sign an exit agreement before being granted a business license.
6
it's important to note that Robert Reich when he was Secretary of Labor under Clinton proposed that it should be illegal for states and cities to compete to attract businesses with tax rebates. They could compete with better prepared workers, better education systems, lots of other things but they couldn't just pay companies to locate there. This proposal went nowhere. All the lobbying maintained all the corporate welfare that are federal government seems to require whether it is a Democratic or a Republican administration. However, as Margaret Dewar's research back in the 1990s points out, no corporate welfare project like that has ever paid off to the city which bought into such a faustian bargain. Wal-Mart is but one example. How little the Walton family members contribute is just typical of many billionaire families. They do not use it to make jobs or contribute back to communities. They hoard like Scrooge McDuck.
45
So the cycle continues. Years ago Woolworths a 5 & 10 store centered many towns with stools nestled next to the soda fountain bar.
Then large department knocked them out.
Then Walmart
What will be next?
12
@LJ I remember those 5 and 10’s! I’m glad I’m old enough to remember “how things used to be,” even as I realize we can’t go back.
15
@Dottie Beck They're back! They just have a different name. Now called Dollar Stores. They create a danger to local grocery stores because they sell many grocery items. Customers will buy there for convenience items as soap and cosmetics taking away business from local grocery stores and even hardware stores.
3
@Dottie Beck
I remember spending a long, long time deciding how to spend my nickel!
4
It's not really up to me to tell people what they should feel and for what they should feel it.
But civic pride ... Walmart?
34
It should be noted that American consumers voted with their wallets to give discounters like Walmart the $ billions that made them what they are today instead of supporting the often higher priced local retailers that often went out of business as a result. Local sponsorship of local sports teams disappeared, local newspapers lost ad revenue, etc. Then to make matters worse, the same consumers demanded cheaper and cheaper merchandise that could only be made overseas, so once again American consumers voted with their wallets to decimate the country's manufacturing sector.
We did this to ourselves.
780
@Eric T "We did this to ourselves."
Give it a rest...many people are on limited budgets,,,except of course the arrogant coastal elites....right?
14
@Eric T - Maybe; but hard to blame middle class consumers being hollowed out of a middle class lifestyle, trying to provide for their kids - at the mercy of the 'Greed is God', um, er, 'good' crowd of Wall Streeters in the '80s, '90s, and the '08 meltdown.
It is of note to glance at the position(s) of the Walton clan on the Forbes 400 Billionaire$ List of Shame over the years, as well as checking the list of corporations who pay no federal taxes over the past decades.
American consumers were undone by Wall Street's unrestrained Vulturedom, juiced by St. Ronnie's union-busting of the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981.
108
@MM We did ok before Walmart. All Walmart did was give people more junk to buy, and people fell for it.
59
Pana Illinois. Walmart came in. Put every small store out of business. Left 25 years later. Now its a desert.
197
@David
I like Pana. Concrete lawn varmint capital of the Midwest, and the city park is home to a breed of swans that look like space aliens. It was a rail hub once upon a time before being marooned by the interstate system. It might be a fine place for a dispensary after 1/1/20. If you build it, they will come. . .
11
@Luilekkerland
And while they’re at it, bring back that railroad hub! We need to revive trains in this country too.
25
Walmart giveth. Walmart takes away.
9
Sam Walton designed his first stores to be centered in small towns, and they were actually a boost to business. I ran a newspaper in one of those small towns and my arrival coincided with the grand-opening of the Walmart. When I drove into town, a noticed a sign on a local store that said, "Going out of business because of Walmart."
The chamber of commerce hired a consultant to come in a give a pep talk to members. Publicly, he was entertaining. In the private meeting, he told members that any business that ran from 9 to 5 was "catering to the unemployed."
In those days, a Walmart attracted customers from a 60 mile radius, and actually helped many of the small business in the community.
When I left that community 3.5 years later, the business with the sign was still there.
Since then, Sam Walton died and his family changed the business model. Times change.
9
@The Perspective - Walmart is destroying cannabidiol??
@tom harrison
CBD - Central Business District
1
@Steve Devitt The business model of destroying CBD in small towns has been a constant for the last 40 years.
4
Sounds like a great opportunity to me!......for the people of Edna to start new businesses! Appliance store, pharmacy, hardware store, etc., etc.!!!! Don't wait too long!!!!
16
Problem is all these stores will still sell stuff made in other countries because our oligarchs have sent all factories overseas. So, we are still stuck as being a retail economy brought to you by the GOP and centrist democrats, who have had all the (wrong capitalist) answers. We need to get our factories/manufacturing back.
5
"stack 'em low,
stack 'em high,
watch those downtown merchants die!"
And now, we gotta go!
18
Dollar stores, bail bonds, check cashing and payday loans- that is the GOP legacy to small town America. Keep wishing for smaller government with fewer services while we indenture our children for overseas boondoggles.
476
@Jackson vey clear if you drive 8 hours in any direction......all manufacturing small towns look exactly as @deirdre described
40
@Deirdre : in what do overseas boondoggles -- and I do agree that the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are that -- have to do with DOLLAR STORES?
Do you think the government runs Dollar Stores? or the GOP?
Do you they run bail bonds companies or check cashing outlets?
Come on, that is ridiculous. Those are private businesses run by individuals and corporations, with nothing much to do with GOVERNMENT.
BTW: I had a friend who worked in bail bonds. He was a Democrat.
1
@gideon belete This is correct - and I especially noticed it driving through Texas about 3 years ago. Not exactly high end retail.
5
While it may be painful in the short run, it’s probably the best thing to happen to the town. Walmart’s move out will enable all sorts of new businesses to flourish.
26
That rarely seems to happen in towns where Wal-Mart has pulled out after killing local businesses.
10
@BR In a town of 5,000?
3
@BR In a town of 5,000?
I grew up in Lolita.
I have seen how local stores had to close when Walmart came in, then what happened when they left. It is heartwarming to hear that Edna seems to be coping. I hope the stability continues.
150
The nearest Walmart is about 22 miles from Edna, which for the average car and driver is about 50 minutes and two gallons of gas round trip. When I hear these stories I wonder what Edna would be like today if Walmart had never come to town. Rural America has been propped up to some extent by Walmart, but would the small, local businesses displaced by Walmart have been able to thrive without a strong economic base (in other words, good paying jobs)? Probably not. It is easy to demonize Walmart but I'm not convinced that our nostalgia of rural America before Walmart was ever all that real. It has always been a hard life there, no?
101
I’ve been there. Nothing there.
12
If Walmart has never come to Edna, it would still be more Pottersville today than Bedford Falls. Yes, the retailers would have hung on for a few years but they would inevitably close- tired of hearing their customers gripe about high prices and poor selection compared to the wonderful Walmart in the next town over.
14
@Michael This is exactly right. The Walmart in Edna drew in people from all over the region and this benefited Edna. Retail taxes may not drop that much right away but those extended shoppers will transfer to the alternative Walmart and no amount of wishful pie in the sky hoping will keep those shoppers in Edna.
8
Thank you for this story. I grew up in a small Texas town, but now live in the SF Bay area. Many of my otherwise well-informed friends have no idea of the challenges faced by citizens in small communities. Awareness of how the rapid changes in our economy have impacted all of us, in both urban and rural areas, is important so that we can work together for just solutions. I appreciate the NYT for covering this story.
265
@Debra Witter
This is true.
2
Considering the fact that these communities shoot themselves in the foot by electing Republicans, I have no interest in helping them.
11
Maybe Amazon will open a 4-star store?
6
Dependence on one customer or one store, no matter how good they/it are,
Is riskier than depending on 2 or 3.
Glad to hear the good folks in Edna are still making it.
96
When Walmart came to another small Texas town, Bonham, up north of Dallas and close to the Red River, the impact on the local retail stores was dramatic and rather faster. The 'town square,' literally the square of streets around the county court house, changed with the departure of a women's clothing store, a drug store, auto parts store, all locally owned and operated, then a classic old Penny's. There was a story about a local small gadget entrepreneur who made a big sale to Walmart, then was ground down on prices until he was no longer able to make a profit. Bonham survived, even prospered in that small town way. Now their Walmart is a SuperCenter, and is probably a lasting bulwark against the Internet killing local jobs. I hope.
4
Too bad bc Bonham unlike Edna was charming.
6
An excellent report Mr. Corkery. Thanks. Hopefully smaller businesses will spring up now that Walmart has departed.
33
Just like the oil and gas or mining companies. Strip the profits out and bail as soon as something offering a slightly higher return comes along. Never mind what you leave in your wake.
292
@Igor It's the capitalistic way!
21
When Walmart declines to answer questions as to why the store was closed, you have to ask yourself whether the store's contribution to the town was taken into account.
Is it just the bottom line and profits that the company cares about or does it value the contribution it makes to society in general and this town specifically. Is it a computer program using mass data and AI or is it a human being?
36
@Nick Those same questions were asked when General Motors abandoned Flint, Michigan. They got the same answers too
44
Walmart is like the GOP. It tries to put everyone else out of business as it concentrates all wealth into the hands of a single owner. Whereas a more fair and evenly distributed economy, brought about by having many different stores, with many different owners, is not only more Democratic, it's more sustainable. And like the GOP, no one really needs a Walmart.
785
@Chicago Guy - Something not mentioned in this piece is the super aggressive stance Walmart, and other big box stores, take regarding breaks in local property taxes for schools, hospitals, county roads, law enforcement, etc.
Too often, these places add insult to injury when shuttering locations that had been originally lured by sweetheart local/state tax breaks, which had not been made available to the longtime local businesses they were replacing.
225
@R. Law
Kind of like sports teams that insist that the local tax payers buy them a new billion dollar arena, give them 50 years years of tax free operation, and then expect those same tax payers to fork over $100 for nosebleed seats, or they will, "Just go somewhere else!". To which not enough cities say, "Well, there's the door. Best of luck!".
BTW: How much did Amazon want to put a new headquarters in New York? Wasn't it about 3 billion? To which the people eventually said, "Enjoy New Jersey!".
97
@Chicago Guy Accoclades and admiration are heaped on "disruptors" Like Jeff Bezos, Kalinek, the Uber guy, Musk and others by Silicon Valley and the "venture capitalists"
If you read the history of Sam Walton's start in merchandising, he had to fight against the big wholesalers that would not sell to him. He managed to buy overstocks and bargains to bring back to the dime store he was running in a small town in Arkansas in trailers or a pickup truck. His customers benefitted. He was one of the original disruptors.
People who critcize and ridicule Wal-Mart think nothing of buying from
Amazon. Jeff Bezos became the richest man in the US in part because internet companies like his did not have to pay sales taxes. Employees in his warehouses earn low wages and working conditions and job security are poor
20
Great story -- I appreciate the thoughtful reporting.
57
Love it or hate it, Walmart, Amazon, offshoring, NAFTA, millions of illegal laborers, all biting into the American Dream of millions. Not sure Yang's UBI can make up for a meaningful job that supports a middle class life. When even the bad jobs leave, there isn't much left.
28
@somsai Nor will it help at all without some active restriction on spiraling housing costs. What's that? Your UBI checks arrived? Good, since the rent just went up by $900.00/month...
15
@somsai
Yang's UBI would be putting $1,000 a month, every month, into Old Sam Walton's pocket.
And all of his kids and grandkids and top CEO's, etc., etc., ect.
Sorry, but I can think of dozens of people I personally know who NEED money for medical care or even a dozen eggs.
Why Yang wants to give a thou a month to the top 50%, I haven't a clue.
Yang's UBI is loopy. Trump will be thrilled to get it.
6
@rosa Sam Walton's kids would lose a lot more via the VAT than they'd gain via freedom dividend. Meanwhile everyone you know that need $ would be getting a thousand a month. $2400 for a couple, $3600 if they have a kid 18 or older at home. That's a mortgage payment most places.