How Clarence Saunders Gambled $10 Million on His Own Stock and Lost Piggly Wiggly

In the summer of 1923, a half-finished palace of pink marble stood on a rise in east Memphis, and the man who had ordered every stone of it handed the keys to his creditors and never lived in the house at all. His name was Clarence Saunders. He had invented the self-service grocery store, built more than a thousand Piggly Wiggly locations, and then borrowed ten million dollars to corner his own company's stock on the New York Stock Exchange. For a few hours on the twentieth of March he owned ninety-nine percent of the shares, drove the price to a hundred and twenty-four dollars, and had Wall Street's short-sellers trapped. He had won. Then the exchange delisted the stock and gave the trapped sellers a week instead of a day to deliver, the corner broke, and Saunders surrendered everything he had. The shares he had cornered at a hundred and twenty-four dollars were auctioned for one dollar. This is the story of the man who invented the way America shops, and lost it all in a single gamble on his own success. Sources include contemporary coverage of the 1923 Piggly Wiggly corner and the New York Stock Exchange's delisting and delivery-deadline ruling; the U.S. patent record for the self-service store; the Pink Palace / Museum of Science and History records on the Saunders mansion and its passage to the City of Memphis; and standard reference records on Saunders, Piggly Wiggly, the Sole Owner stores, and Keedoozle. 0:00 The Pink Palace, 1923 2:55 Memphis, 1916: The First Store 4:35 Ten Million Borrowed to Corner It 7:07 March 20: The Price Hits $124 9:44 The Exchange Delists Piggly Wiggly 11:58 March 23: Settled at $100 a Share 13:58 $2.5 Million Due September First 18:15 Shares Auctioned at One Dollar 20:03 The Palace Becomes a Museum, 1930 22:17 Death in Memphis, October 1953