Cart Blanche?

Yet much of what Fishman highlights on the Wal-Mart Tour has more troubling implications.

Take the L.R. Nelson lawn sprinklers, which used to be made in Peoria, Ill., before Wal-Mart pressured Nelson to make them in China instead. Before the move, one laid-off Peoria worker told the reporter, Chinese managers were "walking around the plant and videotaping us working. That was horrible, horrendous. Right in our faces. They are taking our jobs."

Take the fresh salmon we find in the seafood section for $5.84 a pound (it cost a buck less when Fishman was writing his book). "What exactly did Wal-Mart have to do to get salmon so cheaply?" Fishman wrote, then answered his own question by noting that the Chilean fish farms from which it buys are environmental disaster areas that deposit "a layer of toxic sludge" -- made up of salmon feces and excess fish food -- on the ocean floor.

Or take the beautiful yellow oxford-cloth boy's shirt Fishman stops to rhapsodize over. ("Look at the level of perfection! There's little buttons sewn in for replacement, it's got the little loop -- $8.87!")

The shirt was made in Bangladesh. Two years ago, on an American tour sponsored by a labor rights group, a Bangladeshi garment worker named Robina Akther talked about the working conditions in a factory there that supplies Wal-Mart. At age 16, Fishman writes, Akther worked 14-hour days, seven days a week, for 13 cents an hour; when she didn't sew fast enough, "a supervisor would slap her across the face with the pants she was sewing."

Last year, Akther joined 14 other workers from Bangladesh, China, Swaziland, Indonesia and Nigeria to sue Wal-Mart, arguing that its suppliers' actions are the company's responsibility. Wal-Mart has argued, in response, that it has a code of conduct for its suppliers and a worldwide inspection program to enforce it. Fishman's analysis of this program led him to conclude that Wal-Mart's inspections, however well-meaning, are not tough, frequent or independent enough to prevent abuse.

But lost manufacturing jobs, environmental damage and sweatshops are only part of the cost of "always low prices." The Wal-Mart effect can be more subtle as well. To make this point, Fishman walks me over to the lawn mower display to consider a product that's not there.

That would be the Snapper mower, a high-end brand whose management decided a few years back that it couldn't afford to continue dealing with Wal-Mart. The reason? Meeting Wal-Mart's incessant demands for lower prices would put the company in what Fishman describes as a "death spiral" of "collapsing profitability, offshore manufacturing and the gradual but irresistible corrosion of the very qualities for which Snapper was known."

Almost no one turns down Wal-Mart. The sales volume it offers is simply too enticing. But "once you get hooked on the volume," as the CEO of Snapper's parent company once explained, "it's like getting hooked on cocaine."

A Decision to Make

"This looks like a modest book section," Fishman says. "A lot of inspirational. All books 25 percent off the cover price. Let's see if we can find Sam's."

No luck. Wal-Mart No. 1,674 doesn't seem to carry "Made in America," its founder's autobiography. The book was published in 1992, the same year Sam Walton died.

Is Walton's retail legacy good or bad for us? The question is far from simple, and in Fishman's own book -- which, not surprisingly, we don't find in stock, either -- he wrestles with more aspects than can be covered in a quick Wal-Mart tour.