Aaron Montgomery Ward (February 17, 1843 – December 7, 1913) was an American entrepreneur based in Chicago who made his fortune through the use of mail order for retail sales of general merchandise to rural customers.

Ward, a young traveling salesman of dry goods, was concerned over the plight of many rural Midwest Americans who were, he thought, being overcharged and under-served by many of the small town retailers on whom they had to rely for their general merchandise.

By heavy use of the railroads centered on Chicago, and by associating his business with the non-profit Patrons of Husbandry (the Grangers), Ward offered rural customers a far larger stock than generally available in small towns and at a lower price.

His free catalog, printed by the most modern methods, was widely mailed to customers, allowing them to see pictures of consumer goods and imagine how they might be used.

In tedious rounds of train trips to southern communities, hiring rigs at the local stables, driving out to the crossroads stores and listening to the complaints of the back-country proprietors and their rural customers, he conceived a new merchandising technique: direct mail sales to country people.

It was a time when rural consumers longed for the comforts of the city, yet all too often were victimized by monopolists and overcharged by the costs of many middlemen required to bring manufactured products to the country.

He rented a small shipping room on North Clark Street and published a general merchandise mail-order catalog with 163 products listed.

Although the Sears Tower in Chicago is famous for once being the United States' tallest building, Montgomery Ward's headquarters once held that distinction.

The Montgomery Ward Tower, on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Madison Street in Chicago, reigned as a major tourist attraction in the early-1900s.

Grant Park has been protected since 1836 by "forever open, clear and free" legislation that has been affirmed by four Illinois Supreme Court rulings.

However, Crown Fountain and the 139-foot (42 m) Jay Pritzker Pavilion were exempt from the height restriction because they were classified as works of art and not buildings or structures.

[citation needed] The Montgomery Ward catalog's place in history was acknowledged when the Grolier Club, a society of bibliophiles in New York, exhibited it in 1946 alongside Webster's Dictionary as one of the 100 books with the most influence on life and culture of the American people.

[13] Despite the collapse of its catalog business and brick and mortar department stores in 2001, Montgomery Ward & Co.'s reincarnation as an online retailer still adheres to the once unheard-of philosophy of "satisfaction guaranteed", although it is not the same company.