Despite the intermittent honking of horns by drivers sounding their support as they drove past on Redwood Road, the presence of the picketers failed to thin the crowd of shoppers eager to take advantage of Wal-Mart's discount prices. The store's parking lot remained packed.

Theresa Beesley of the Utah National Organization of Women, however, said the cost those Utah shoppers and others end up paying for Wal-Mart's low prices is just too high.

"The grocery store I worked at as a cashier for 20 years was put out of business by Wal-Mart," Beesley said. "And now you see even big companies such as Kroger's holding down their wages so they can try and compete with Wal-Mart."

The world's largest retailer and the pioneer of the large discount chain store concept, Wal-Mart frequently is attacked for being a corporate bully by offering its workers substandard benefits and driving small mom-and-pop stores out of business.

"They're anti-union and they're driving down wages and harming everyone," said George Neckel of Utah Jobs for Justice.

While Wal-Mart's shareholders might have a pretty good Christmas, it probably won't be so merry for the company's 1.3 million workers whose average wage is $8.23 per hour, he added. "Most people can't get by on that kind of pay."

For one researcher, such verbal assaults are nothing new in the history of American retailing.

"The same things were said beginning with the rise of department stores and the development of Sears Roebuck and the mail-order catalog houses," said Zachary Courser, whose report Wal-Mart and the Politics of American Retail was released earlier this month by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

In the late 19th Century, newspaper editors attacked catalog houses like Sears and Montgomery Ward as leeches on their economy that drove out local merchants, paid no local taxes, offered no jobs and gave no civic benefit to the communities they claimed to serve, Courser wrote.

And with the rise of chain stores such as Woolworth Five and Dime and Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., better known as A&P, the attacks continued.

"An editorial from The St. Louis Post Dispatch attacked the low wages that chain stores offered, wondering if 'mothers and fathers realize what will happen to their children when they have to go to work for chain stores at $20 per week, or less?' " the report said.

In fact Courser, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, argues Wal-Mart's wages are in line with those paid by the rest of the nation's retail sector. "It doesn't distinguish itself, but Wal-Mart is very close to the average," he said.

Courser said history shows that it is natural for American consumers to be skeptical when the retail marketplace undergoes a significant transformation such as that brought about by Wal-Mart.

"Just because a store is successful and people shop there doesn't necessarily mean they like the company," he said. "Making customers and making friends are two different jobs. Wal-Mart is good at one and no so good at the other. They need to do a lot better job communicating to the public the benefits they bring to communities."

For instance, Courser said Wal-Mart's discounted prices benefit America's poorest and most rural consumers. Studies suggest Wal-Mart saves its customers about $16 billion a year, much more than the cost the company supposedly imposes on society.

Utahn John Kirk, a retired engineer, understands the Wal-Mart dichotomy well.

As he walked out of the Taylorsville Wal-Mart store and began to unload his cart, he glanced up and saw the picketers near the sidewalk. "I don't necessarily like shopping here but this is the only place where I can get the brands my wife will use at a reasonable price," he said, closing his trunk. "When I hear that they don't pay their workers as much as they could, it bothers me a lot, too."