After the lull of winter the East Linn Museum will soon open again.
In the meantime, during the coldest part of the year, we have been reading two wish books to keep fresh our knowledge of various artifacts in the museum. These books are new copies of Sears-Roebuck catalogs acquired from the modern day Multiple Mercantile business, Amazon. Like Sears-Roebuck used to be, Amazon will sell you about anything you want but with more rapid delivery.
The new, old, catalogs we’ve been scanning through are for 1893 and 1923. They are reproductions and we wanted to get the oxymoron of new in there.
In looking at the wish books, as we know they were called in the past, a particular interest was kept in mind. The 1920s are often looked upon by historians as a demarcation date separating the population of the United States into more urban than rural.
Needs for military supplies created by the Civil War between the states plus high rates of immigration from European countries suffering from divisive internal politics kicked American industrialization into high gear with good supplies of raw materials, transportation and labor.
The three leading countries of the 19th and early 20th centuries were the United States, Germany and Japan when it came to industrialization. (An ominous concentration for the 20th century as we now know).
By the 1920s, farmers’ children had better chances of finding jobs around manufacturing hubs, the kind that kept Sears Roebuck supplied with the proliferation of goods that made catalog readers from Maine to Washington state want more, especially when the mail, including parcel post after the 1890’s, brought longed for purchases to the dreamers who could afford them.
As Sears reassured its customers, it sold only what people wanted at reasonable prices. When we think of the past as being a foreign land, catalogs like the ones put out by Sears make promising guidebooks.
With the 1897 catalog, we can see how things were going before the Victorian era was shot literally dead by the Great War of 1914-18.
We are looking at bucolic here, the horse and buggy days when dowagers wore black for mourning and well-dressed gentlemen wore Prince Albert suit coats and smoked Prince Albert tobacco. These were definitely horse and buggy days, and the 1897 book displays around 50 pages advertising buggies, wagons and horse tack.
Guns, ammunition and hunting gear take up to 28 pages, in contrast, and that includes bird calls and a favorite – grass suits, designed to make a hunter look like a small hay stack or a big tussock for only $1.75.
Medicinals haul in at 25 pages and include enough opiates and other poisonous chemicals to kill off a few rich relatives. Homeopathic medicines only treated with pinches of this or that or a droplet and were not as hazardous as laudanum and opium or rat killer.
The music department runs to 29 pages, which includes instruments from parlor organs to Jews harps. A bugle similar to the one in the museum’s military room can be had for $1.50 and is a cavalry bugle. Bigger and fancier ones for artillery and infantry respectively are priced at $3.20 and $3.25.
Often, we think of eras as being marked by women’s clothing styles. We know the hustle of the bustle was Victorian and realize it took many yards of fabric to clothe the queen.
By 1897 the big sleeve took precedent over fuller skirts, but those were long. Younger women wanted to be busty and wasp waisted, and Sears sold corsets to help them squeeze down to 18-inch waistlines.
By going to the 1923 catalog, we can get a jolt because ladies fashions are among the first things featured and flat-chested, waist-less boyish look was in. Women had bobbed hair and shortened hemlines. Comfort corsets advertise a tubular figure.
It was an “Oh, you kid” time, when women gained the right to vote in 1920 and more freedom of opportunity in general. (Prohibition was also in effect, but the pages that might show us copper tubing like the museum’s example are missing. Our copper tubing was said to have been lost by a boot legger.)
Twenty-six years separate what is seen in the 1897 catalog from that of the 1923 one and we know changes did not take place overnight.
By 1923 parcel post and rural fee delivery enhanced Sears’ mail order service. Another change came in 1906 when the Pure Food and Drug Act passed and Sears’ dealings in medicinals shrank considerably.
Gone from the page are the cure-alls of yore. People were advised to use good soap and shampoo and to brush their teeth. Cleanliness became a road to health. Nostrums relying heavily on alcohol had to be found elsewhere, as was determined by the Pure Food and Drug Act and Prohibition.
A would-be poisoner, however, could look under bug killers, where displayed was Paris Green, a form of arsenic.
Jews harps and ocarinas are no longer featured in the music department of the 1923 edition, but there are five hand-cranked record players featured and a selection of Colombia records, sacred songs and the blues included.
We can recognize classic titles like “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad” and “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm?” World Was I added the song “After They’ve Seen Paree?”
One remarkable change involves the advertising of guns. The 1897 book shows pages of different rifles and pistols. The 1923 one displays eight shotguns plus one page of ammunition. Otherwise, there are two air rifles.
Under Miscellaneous Police Goods, a number of Colt revolvers appear, as do handcuffs, police whistles, a badge and a club. In other words, far less armament is featured than in the 1897 book. Does this reflect the decline of the American frontier, like some historians who tie such an end in with urbanity?
Something else going on, too, is the rise of specialty stores in growing towns. Sweet Home had a confectioner’s store briefly, for instance, as a taffy cutter in the museum’s collection proves.
In urban areas customers were less securely tied to Sears. What the 1923 book shows is modernity hovering on the horizon.
Radio, for instance, was coming and a customer could order parts needed for a do-it-yourself radio.
More striking is a page advertising “Sport Bodies for Ford Cars.” The horse and buggy were still on the scene, but Sears now devoted more pages to the automobile and its parts and Ford was a primary featured model.
Too, electricity was coming in, but slowly for rural areas. For years some people in Sweet Home and Foster could buy electricity from Hans Wodtli and his Foster enterprises, but it was only on when he was up and stirring. When he went to bed, at 8 or 9, off went the electricity.
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises in the 1923 catalog is its offering of kits for building houses and ones for farm buildings, including barns as well as for sheds and cottages that bolted together.
Available concrete mixers aided in setting things up. With a house kit came pre-cut lumber, doors, windows and basically all that was needed plus even paint and varnish.
A would-be-builder could guarantee better success by sending for Sears’ free book, “House Bilt; Modern Homes.” Since no floor plans appear in the catalog, the free book appears essential.
Available, too, is a bathroom kit containing a commode, tub and basin. A septic tank was also available for those forsaking their privies, necessary in many towns. This also brought about the availability of toilet paper to replace the catalog pages, which could be used in outdoor privies after reading them, but which were disastrous in this new indoor plumbing.
It is interesting to look at catalogs like Sears because of the unexpected which lurks in their pages. We think of the coming of electricity to the East Linn area and wonder when street lights came in.
The 1897 book has an answer: kerosene lanterns in four variations, of which may bring to mind a song about the old lamplighter who made the night a little brighter wherever he went. At around $4.00, a street lamp seems a reasonable price, although we’d have to figure in lamplighter wages.
May we all do the same to brighten up winter.
Speaking of this, we want to thank The New Era for the support it gives the East Linn Museum. It continues to be of great importance and we continue being grateful.
The museum opens again in February. Visitors can come in and look at the old catalogs or travel back into history, that foreign land, while viewing the displays.