Long before television, or even radio, mass marketing was limited to advertising in old forms: billboards, magazines, and catalogues. The most successful of the catalogues was far and away the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. catalogue. People could literally live off of this catalogue. Now, I ask of you, the Teeming Millions, what are the effects still felt today by this homogeonizing force?
So far, I have found many sources exploring the catalogue’s effect on American standards and culture in the early half of the Twentieth Century, but what about in World War II? The Cold War? Reagan economics? The Dot-Com Nineties? Today?
The effect of the Sears Catalog was much more pronounced back in the days before Playboy Magazine. The Sears Catalog’s women’s-underwear ads were legendary.
Not to mention it’s usefulness in the outhouse. I’m sure it was a pleasurable alternative to corncobs. It may have even been the impetus for the creation of toilet paper.
Well, I think the biggest thing was the mail-order aspect of it. It made American consumer goods accessible to folks way out in the boondocks, and I think that brought the rural areas of America up to speed faster than would normally have happened without the miracle of Sears home delivery.
And I think it was a great leveler, the great homogenizer. Folks out in the boondocks could own the exact same consumer goods as folks in the big city.
As a Baby Boomer who was there, I would say that the influence of the Sears catalog was already on the wane by about 1970. This was when America began to change over from “some people have a car” to “most people have a car” to “EVERYBODY has a car”, and you could drive to the store and buy your consumer goods first-hand, no matter where you lived.
Also, I think television was taking over the function of homogenizing American culture. And we had a vigorous toilet paper industry, so we didn’t need the catalog for that any more!
P.S. You couldn’t use newspapers to wipe yourself in the privy because (a) they had messy black ink that smeared like mad and you didn’t want that all over your butt, (b) newspapers were an essential means of communication, and were carefully read and passed around from hand to hand, and (c) after they were “old news” they were too useful for other things around the house: as fire starters, in the days of coal fires, or the bottom of the birdcage, or to stuff in the window cracks as insulation, or to stuff in the toes of oversize shoes, or to glue to the walls for insulation, or when you pluck a chicken and singe the pinfeathers off, if you wipe it with damp newspaper, it helps get all the tiny fuzzy bits off.
Yeah. Cars are the reason that Sears had to start building retail stores, as early as the 1910’s. Ironic that the cars they sold helped to bring about a massive corporate change.
I know people who live in homes that were ordered from the Sears catalogue.
These are real houses, quite old, but real.
Mullica Hill, NJ, which is an “antiquing” town, has several homes featured on tours that are straight from the Sears catalogue. There must be many more 'round the country.
Certainly a catalogue that sold everything right up to houses has had an impact on our culture. But why was my first thought about “toilet paper” as well?
Duck Duck Goose
Judging from your PS you must be an old country kid.
You forgot stuffing your wet shoes to soak up moisture while drying without shrinking
[sup]slightly provocative post made in the hope of stimulating a really good topic[/sup]
The dot-com 90s? My guess is that the successful retail business model for the internet will be to take exactly the same market as has been occupied by the catalogues. And that market will still be small.
I doubt that the catalogues were a significant homogenising force since a great amount of the retail trade is visceral, sociable experience – in the shop with your peers – rather than wanting from dry pages. Whilst people out the sticks could ape their city [strikethrough] betters [/strikethrough] I suspect the catalogues reflected preferences rather than influenced them, and thus are a record of the time for the bulk of the population rather than a determinant of socially acceptable consumption standards. To the extent that they were important I would still put the cheapness of postal rates (presumably due to cheaper/ more reliable transport) ahead of the catalogues themselves as a social force.
I used to rent a room in the house that Berke Breathed featured in his strip as the Bloom Boarding House, which is indeed one of these houses. How’s that for $.02?
