In the early 1900s, there were limited ways for rural American families to purchase the items they could not produce themselves. Some of these basic food staples were sugar, flour, salt, pepper, syrup, coffee, tea and spices for pickling and preserving.
How families bought such things depended on the money they had to spend, when they could get into town, or if they could shop by mail-order catalog.
Going into town to buy supplies would have been by walking, horse-drawn buggy or wagon, and sometimes, train travel. The widespread use of automobiles would only gradually come into being after several more decades.
Weeks of spring rain often turned flooded dirt roads into thick mud. Under such conditions, a horse and wagon would have more traction than the new automobile which needed better roads and drier conditions.
Each trip, even to the nearest small town, could take most of a morning or afternoon and that would be time lost from farm work and chores. Such a trip was often carefully planned in advance. Sometimes it was necessary to go to town unexpectedly, because a piece of broken farm equipment had to be replaced or repaired at the blacksmith’s shop. Living in rural areas was often an isolated way of life.Farm families needed ways to earn cash throughout the year in order to make purchases and have money set aside for emergencies. There could be extra hay, straw, oats or corn to sell after harvest time, but most of those crops raised on the farm were used there as animal feed, bedding or saved as seed for the next year’s crops.
The goal was finding a consistent way to earn the money for purchases. Even farmers who owned many acres could be, by their own description, “land rich, but cash poor.”
Part of a farm family’s cash often came from the efforts of the mother and the children. Mother was usually the person who tended a flock of chickens and prepared the eggs for sale to a store in town. She also made cream or butter from the cows’ milk which she also sold the same way. The children helped gather eggs, milk the cows, separate cream from milk and churn butter to sell, as well as for the family’s own use.
Father was often working in the fields with the horses, tending the other animals or maintaining the equipment and harness needed to farm.
At the general store in town, a family received cash or credit for their dairy products and eggs. What was available at such a store was not always what the family needed or could afford.
Shopping by Mail-Order Catalogs
The development and growth of mail-order catalogs in the United States came about in the later part of the 1800s. These catalogs gave the rural population other ways to purchase a variety of items, once only available by a trip to the city.
Rural families continued to do business at the local general store and in town, but now a greater choice existed. Mail-order catalogs brought variety, competitive prices and convenience to rural customers.
In 1902, the U.S. Post Office Department made Rural Free Delivery official after years of experimenting with the concept. RFD and favorable postal rates enabled farm families to receive free mail delivery and have better access to information and products.
Mail-order catalogs, weekly newspapers and periodicals linked the isolated countryside to life in the cities and nation at large. The rural letter carrier traveled a route by horse-drawn buggy or wagon and later by motorized vehicles. Mailboxes along the roads were expected to be placed buggy high for efficient pickup and delivery by the carrier.
Catalogs from the two major mail-order firms of the time, Montgomery Ward & Co. and Sears, Roebuck & Co., contained hundreds of pages and were filled with thousands of detailed black and white drawings, along with elaborate descriptions of those items.
Farm family members spent enjoyable times going through these catalogs, talking about the things which were really needed and those they would like to have someday. The catalogs were the “wish books” of family buying. One of the most popular mail-order purchases was a bicycle.
Catalogs created a demand for new products and brought an improved standard of living to families, both in the country and the city. For children, a catalog was an exciting, thick picture book with lots to read. Old catalogs were recycled to the privy.
In the early years, an order could be mailed from a farm, shipped by a catalog company to a local railroad station and picked up by the customer upon a payment of cash. The introduction of rural free delivery by the post office, an expansion of parcel post to outlying areas, along with collect on delivery service, greatly increased a farm family’s range of purchasing through mail-order.
Parcel post also gave farmers a direct way of shipping some of their own goods and produce. No longer were they limited to the delivery schedules of the railroads or private express services.
Farm families also depended on the information in mail-order seed catalogs to select what vegetables they would grow in the garden during the coming season. Which would be the best tomatoes? How could they make this year’s garden crop better? Was there a variety of green beans that would do well in hot, dry weather?
Rural families grew the majority of what they needed to eat throughout the year. Much time was spent tending the garden, followed by harvesting, canning, drying, pickling and storing of produce for use during the winter months.
Seed companies and nursery firms shipped vegetable and flower seeds, starter plants, vines and sapling trees. Plans for the summer garden were often made during the winter months, by lamplight at the kitchen table, when the family looked over these catalogs.
As a treat for children, seed companies offered a special packet of mixed flower and vegetable seeds to plant in the garden and wait for what surprise plants would grow.
Families also saved favorite garden seeds from the previous season for use in the coming year. Likewise, they relied on the recommendations of their neighbors about vegetable varieties, frequently sharing plants and seeds which had worked well for them.
Rural Salesmen
Door-to-door salesmen, driving a buggy or lightweight wagon, made occasional visits to farm families.
Home remedies, spices, seasonings, flavoring extracts and other health care products were often purchased during visits by the Watkins’ Man or the Rawleigh’s Man. These company distributors had regular routes through the countryside, selling and taking orders for their wares.
Both major companies had rural beginnings. In 1868, J.R. Watkins had started selling liniment by horse-drawn wagon in Minnesota farm country. The other young man, W.T. Rawleigh of Wisconsin, began selling several health remedies by horse and buggy in 1889.
A salesman’s visit was a special event, particularly for the younger children, who eagerly watched as he displayed the many items in his large sample case. They admired his hand-lettered wagon and petted his horse.
Ordering through these individual company representatives, farm families could purchase a variety of household items such as salves, ointments, liniments, soaps, shampoo, spices, cocoa, flavoring extracts, baking powder, toothbrushes and toothpaste. A child’s first toothbrush often came from such a visit.
Customers frequently felt these salesmen presented a greater variety of home health needs and fresher spices than they could buy at the general store. Some of the customers began selling company products as independent retailers. In remote areas of the country, salesmen provided the only practical way to purchase health care remedies.
These companies also issued their own popular reference pamphlets. The frequently consulted publications were a combination almanac, health guide and cookbook. Both the Watkins and the Rawleigh companies built customer loyalty through quality products, trial samples and money-back guarantees of customer satisfaction.
In many ways, U.S. farm families in the early 1900s experienced a way of life which had been familiar to preceding generations in rural America. But in other ways, they had begun to experience major changes taking place within the country at large.
Within the next seventy years of their lives, children of this time witnessed the widespread use of electricity, running water, automobiles, trucks, mechanized farm equipment, airplanes, telephones, radio, television, improved health care, supermarkets, computers and the beginning of space flight.
No previous American generation had seen more changes in the way the average person lived, in farming and in productivity of the land. They were amazed by the changes and benefited from them, but continued to remember how it had been when they and the 20th Century were young.
