Made In America - Bill Bryson [137]
Actually, not everywhere. In the early 1900s, America was still a largely rural country. Farm families and small-town folk longed to consume and possess like everyone else, but for years there was no way to reach them. Then in 1872 an organization formally called the Patrons of Husbandry but better known as the Grange (an old English word, etymologically related to grain and signifying a farmstead) began offering a mail-order service to its members. It, too, was a huge hit and by the 1890s its catalogue contained over 24,000 items, bringing a new world of choice and possibility to thousands of rural consumers. The Grange eventually evolved into Montgomery Ward, but in the mean time it was overtaken by one of the most successful companies America has ever seen: Sears, Roebuck and Company.
Founded in 1886, the enterprise was named for its two original partners, Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck, though the latter sold out in 1893. Sears’s rise was little short of phenomenal. By 1900 it had surpassed the Grange in size and by 1906 it was so mammothly successful that it needed 2,000 workers to process the 900 sackloads of orders it received each day. Such was the volume of business that the railways, telegraph companies and Post Office all opened branch offices at the company’s Chicago headquarters.4 Sears’s success is all the more remarkable when you consider that in its early days it was not terribly noted for scruples. In one early ad, it offered a sewing-machine at the exceptional price of $1. Customers who responded received a needle and thread.5 In 1899 it ran ads offering, for the next sixty days only, a luxuriously upholstered sofa and two matching chairs for just ninety-five cents. Thousands sent in their orders – and received three pieces of doll’s house furniture.
Despite these stunts, people became hugely devoted to Sears. In rural areas especially, they relied on Sears for everything from shoes to sewing-machines. By the early 1900s it was possible to buy a car (called, naturally, the Sears) or even a house and all its furnishings from the company. The biannual receipt of its catalogues was among the high points of the year. The people of one North Dakota town were so taken with the company that they renamed their community Seroco, for Sears Roebuck & Co., and would have been more explicit had the US Postal Service let them.
The quarter of a century or so from 1885 saw the refinement of another venerable component of American retailing: the brand name. Although a few durable brand names date from even earlier – Smith Brothers Cough Drops from 1866, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda from 1867, Ivory Soap from 1878 – the closing years of the nineteenth century and opening years of the twentieth saw the birth of a positive blizzard of famous products: Coca-Cola (1886), Log Cabin Syrup (1887), Aunt Jemima pancake mix (1889), Shredded Wheat (1892), Tootsie Rolls and Cracker Jack (1896), Jell-O gelatin (1897), Pepsi-Cola (1898), Fig Newtons (1900), Animal Crackers (1902), Post Toasties (1904), Planters Peanuts (1906), Sunkist fruit (1907), and Life Savers (1911).
What made all this possible, in large part, was the development of secure packaging such as the National Biscuit Company’s patented (and much misspelled) In-er-Seal wrap, which not only ensured freshness but also enabled manufacturers to turn from selling in