阅读理解

　　At 20 year of age F．W．Woolworth found work in exchange for room and board at a local dry goods store, and after his employers held a successful clearance sale he saw the possibilities of a discount store．His key improvements were having the goods on open display instead of behind the counter, and having prices plainly marked instead of bargaining．

　　With borrowed funds he opened his first F．W．Woolworth store in the suburb of Utica, New York in 1879, but the store closed the following year．Deciding that his problem had been a poor location．He opened a new store in downtown Lancaster, Pennsylyania in 1881．Within months he was opening multiple stores in business partnerships with local retailers, and within a few years Woolworth was a millionaire．In 1909 he opened his first store in England, and in 1913 the company opened its new headquarters in New York’s Woolworth Building－then the tallest building in the world．

　　Woolworth had a deep fear of dentists, allowing his teeth to rot , and died of a dental(牙齿)lunch counters in many stores, Woolworth was America’s largest restaurant chain through the 1940s．The company peaked as the world’s largest department store chain in the late 1970s, with more than 4.000 stores．By the late 1990s business was sputtering(喷溅), and the company closed all of its American department stores, renamed itself Venator, and sold the Woolworth Building．In 2003 Venator renamed itself after the company’s most successful division, Foot Locker, Inc．Under separate ownership, Woolworth stores are still operated in Austria, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, and the United Kingdom．