The Way We Really Were

 

By Nancy K. Crevier

Pondering the changes in technology that have occurred in just the past 30 years can be mind-boggling. But most Americans cannot recall a time when cars, planes, television, telephones, electricity, and other conveniences did not exist, and the youngest generation takes for granted the existence of computers and wireless technology, as well as access to the world via the Internet.

Every year, new advances continue to amaze and astound. The world today is a vastly different one than that of just 100 years ago. Residents Dottie and John Evans came across a reprint of a 1909 Sears and Roebuck catalog recently, and shared it with The Newtown Bee. Flipping through the pages, one has a sense of awe at how far society has advanced — or not — in just ten decades.

For many who grew up in the premall era, particularly those who lived removed from metropolitan areas, there were three very exciting times of the year: the arrival in the mail of the spring/summer Sears Roebuck catalog, the arrival of the fall/winter Sears Roebuck catalog, and the arrival of the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog.

The spring and fall editions were enormous tomes, the thousands of thin crisp pages filled with practical descriptions and straightforward photographs of clothing, shoes, jewelry, furniture, toys (especially the Christmas edition), tools, drapes, rugs, and bedding. Appliances from tabletop hair driers to the amazing, new frost-free refrigerators could be ordered and delivered to the doorstep in just a matter of days.

The female models radiated wholesomeness as they showed off the selections of sweaters, slacks, and dresses, or turned an ankle to display this year’s newest shoe style. The men were rugged fellows wearing metal-toed boots and demonstrating power drills, or all business in button-down shirts and wide-lapelled suits.

During the last century the Sears Roebuck catalog offered Americans across the country access to items that might otherwise have been unavailable, its goal since its inception in 1886 by founder Richard Sears as a part-time mail order watch business. Pairing up with watch repairman Alvah Roebuck, the two watched the business grow, then began adding other products, putting out the first Sears Roebuck catalog in 1891.

In excerpts from the 1979 Ventura Books Fall 1909 edition of the Sears Roebuck and Co. catalog, editor Jeffrey Feinman calls the catalog a “visit to early America.” It is also like a visit to a foreign country.

One hundred years ago, the country was still absorbing the cultures of European countries as immigrants flooded the land. The “Simple Rules for Ordering” from the catalog, therefore, are printed not only in English, but Swedish and German as well. The pages are devoid of models, but packed with greatly detailed descriptions of the many items crucial to survival in a what was still a mainly agrarian land, where people either did it themselves or did without

The niceties, remedies, household items, or even replacement parts for equipment are there in the pages of Sears Roebuck, along with products about which citizens of 1909 America could only dream. Some of the tools are familiar still, but others like the conversation tubes and hearing horns, wagon wheel oil troughs, and blacksmith implements, all once valued items, have faded into the past.

Considering the founders’ backgrounds it is not surprising that the first several pages are devoted to the watch and jewelry departments. No digital watches or even wristwatches are to be found. This was a time of pocket and locket watches for men and women, and the elegant chains that assured the timepiece would not stray from its owner. There was no Radio Shack or jeweler to make sure that watches that took a lickin’ kept on tickin’, nor were citizens of 1909 apt to just toss out a watch and get a new one, as they might today. So Sears Roebuck thought to offer all of the materials and tools necessary, as well, for watch repair.

A small town in middle-America circa 1900 was not apt to have a piano showroom, but that did not mean that those living in remote areas were not musically inclined. Sears Roebuck offered four models of upright Beckwith pianos, as well as pipe, home, parlor, and chapel organs, ranging from $24.35 to $138. Musicians of all kinds, though, were accommodated in the pages of the catalog, with dozens of violins, violas, cellos, banjos, mandolins, and accordions offered for sale. The musical instruments, like many articles ordered then, arrived by either US Mail, freight, or express to the customer’s nearest delivery station.

In a time of hybrid electric cars, passenger trains that reach speeds of 360 miles per hour, and space travel, it is eye-opening to realize that it was only 100 years ago when the mode of travel was still dependent on genuine horsepower. The 1909 catalog showcases 11 buggies, five styles of harnesses, and an entire department for saddles.

Pages of rifles, revolvers, and ammunition are followed by pages of equipment for making and loading gun shells, as well as other hunting necessities. Monoculture, worldwide shipping of exotic foods, and giant cattle farms to feed the masses were not a part of the 1909 generation’s reality.

Football, baseball, fishing, boxing, and fencing gear tell of the early 20th Century man’s pastime pursuits. Nary a Vibram Five Finger shoe nor a fleece running pant is in sight. There are no skateboards, Nordic Tracks, balance balls, or even women’s swimming suits to be found.

Women were expected to fawn over the Haviland China sets, silver flatware, and certainly long for the Seroco carpet sweeper or Superba Ball-Bearing Washer for just $6.50. A far cry from the computerized, front-loading washer of 2009 at a cost of close to $1,000, great-grandma relished the fact that her washer featured a triple action, reverse motion agitator, and ball bearings that made it run with such ease that “a little child can run it just as well as a strong woman and do the washing just as well.” For great-grandma’s washer was strictly powered by the human arm. (Just 25 years later, The Newtown Bee published a Sears ad for the new Kenmore wringer washer priced at $34.95 on sale.)

She could furnish her home with rocking chairs, parlor tables, beds, bookcases, buffets, and dressers; paper the parlor walls with wallpaper ordered from the catalog; and maybe rest on one of the upholstered, plush lounging couches, if her family was wealthy enough to afford the nearly $11 it cost.

The Acme black-enamel steel range burned hard and soft coal, or wood, and sold for just $25.07. The nickel-plated door fronts were elaborately decorated in a Victorian scroll, and the stove was lined throughout with asbestos to better control heat regulation and improve baking capabilities. What more could a homemaker want?

But women could also rely on Sears Roebuck to offer up-to-date beauty formulas in 1909, just as today’s woman looks to fashion magazines for advice and cosmetics sold at the mall to maintain a youthful appearance. Who is to say that the “Famous White Lily Face Wash” for only 75 cents a bottle was any less effective in treating skin disturbances than some of today’s offerings at several times that cost? “Floral Massage Cream” arrived with an instruction book on “How to be Beautiful.” Milk of Roses for the complexion, orange flower skin cream, liquid rouge, and floral complexion powder promised relief from skin irritations and nourishment for aging skin — not unlike the advertisements for any number of beauty products a century later.

The ideal body was apparently no less a pursuit of the woman living 100 years ago than it is in 2009. Hopefully, women today do not feel compelled to turn to contraptions such as the advertised Sears Roebuck and Co. Princess Bust Developer. The plungerlike device “gives the right exercise to the muscles of the bust, compels a free and normal circulation of the blood throughout the capillaries, glands, and tissues of the flabby, undeveloped parts. These parts are restored to a healthy condition, they expand and fill out, become round, firm, and beautiful,” promises the description. The companion “Bust Cream or Food” for “starved skin and wasted tissue” was assured to assist in creating a “perfect, symmetrical figure.” Ouch.

Better, almost, to stick with the medicinal remedies of the day sold in the catalog. The tonics provided some semblance of hope to people without easy access to medical care. “Wonder Heart Cure” contained cactus, digitalis, iron pyrophosphate, and caffeine, and was valued as a weak heart stimulant. “Nerve and Brain” tablets made up of dried sulphate iron, potassium carbonate, asefetida, extract of dameana, aloin, zinc phosphate, and extract of nux vomica, were marketed to the male customer. “Dr McBains’ Blood Pill” or “Dr Baker’s Blood Builder” were combinations of botanical extracts promising to cleanse the blood of impurities leading to illness and disease. While most of these 20th century remedies are viewed today as “snake oil” or even dangerous, some of the remedies contained precursors to today’s modern medicines, or botanicals that continue to be used by naturopathic or homeopathic doctors.

We are inclined to think of ourselves in 2009 as an advanced society, with all of our needs and desires just a few clicks away on the computer. But we may have advanced so far as to have lost a sense of “homeliness” apparent even in the pages of a utilitarian catalog a century ago.

Ordering from the catalog was a little like visiting over the fence with a wise friend who has thought of all of the pitfalls that might befall someone ordering by mail. Directions were detailed, but friendly.

“We are bitterly opposed to substituting one article for another unless instructed to do so by the customer,” notes Paragraph E, one of several paragraphs following the “Message of Good Cheer” in the front of the catalog. “We believe, except in rare cases, it is very presuming on the part of any house receiving an order for one kind of goods to send another, without first having the written consent of the customer to do so.”

In an era that truly believed “Neither a lender or a borrower be,” Sears gently reprimanded those customers who sought to pay on an installment plan. “All these inquiries can be avoided for the reason that our only terms are cash, we never extend time, we open no accounts nor allow goods to be sold on the installment plan.”

There is even a sense of regret in Paragraph M, “About Unprofitable Shipments,” in which Sears exemplifies occasions in which, for the customer’s as well as the shipper’s best interests, an item might not be sent out as requested. “For example: A party living far distant may order a dollar’s worth of sugar to go by express. The express charges would equal the cost of the sugar. We occasionally get an order for heavy hardware, the order amounting to less than $5.00. The goods weigh 100 pounds. We are asked to ship them by express. This is usually an ‘unprofitable’ shipment…. We do not wish you to send us a dollar for anything unless we can save you money on the purchase.”

From tiny nuts, bolts, and screws, to wrought iron bed frames and 200-pound sideboards, the Sears Roebuck and Co. catalog was the world wide web of 1909, bringing the luxuries of the outside world to remote regions, and binding people together in a simpler time.

According to the Sears archives, Sears ceased production of the “Big Book” in 1993, but continues to offer smaller, specialty division catalogs to the consumer, as well as on online ordering option.

“With malice toward none and charity for all, we extend to all mankind our sincere wishes for greater prosperity, health and happiness.” Sears’ 1909 message to its catalog customers is unlike the aggressive or slyly subliminal messages conveyed to modern consumers. It was advertising at its most humble form, and a formula that worked for that company for the more than 100 years that it serviced catalog clients.