Wal-Mart presents a mixed picture to us

"Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, 'All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat.
"Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.'"
-- INHERIT THE WIND

The older I get, the more I am cursed by the ability to see both sides of issues I used to have knee-jerk reactions to.

Take Wal-Mart, for example.

I used to think Wal-Mart was the devil. Not only did the company drive down wages, mistreat its employees and destroy local businesses, it made things difficult for companies wanting to sell it merchandise.

I remember the story of a company in the United Kingdom that made blue jeans that it sold to department stores and clothing stores. Wal-Mart looked at the price and told the supplier it would have to cut that price in half if it wanted to sell its jeans in Wal-Mart stores.

As the company grew and grew to become the largest in the world, it squeezed more and more small businesses out of the market place. I figured it was the worst kind of globalization.

On the other hand ...

For tens of millions of people in this country either below of just above the poverty line -- the lower middle class -- the low prices at Wal-Mart make their lives significantly better by stretching their money.

That's not an insignificant benefit.

In addition, Wal-Mart has a policy in its stores of wherever possible, promoting from within to fill management positions. Since managers of stores can make six-figure incomes, Wal-Mart joins the military as one of a very few ways for poor kids with high school educations to really better themselves.

Yes, they're anti-union.

Yes, they don't pay well and don't provide good benefits to many of their employees.

Yes, their management is often resistant to environmental concerns.

Yes, being as big as they are gives them a lot of power to select winners and losers in the business world.

On balance, I still think Wal-Mart has a negative effect on our society, if for no other reason than the thousands of small businesspersons and entrepreneurs it drives out of business.

But the devil?

Not even close. If anything, Wal-Mart is just another sign of the times in which we live, times in which the bigger the business, the more it begins covering the entire world.

And that's a shame, because the birds have lost their wonder and the clouds do smell of gasoline.