Welcome, Wal-Mart Wal-Mart (has) grown from a single shop in a small Arkansas town into a world-wide colossus with 4,000 stores, 1.3 million employees, $245 billion in annual sales and 100 million customers each week. The company's success isn't built on exploiting. It's built on providing. Wal-Mart can't force anybody to work at its stores, nor can it force anybody to shop there. Through relentless cost-cutting and technological innovation, the company offers low-cost goods to consumers, jobs for willing employees and solid returns for shareholders. Yet Chicago...The City Council killed the prospect of a Supercenter in Chicago's South Side Chatham...