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Good Old Days: History of American Morals and Manner Sears Roebuck Catalog
Arno Press/Simon & Schuster, 1940. Glossy pictorial covers. Superb advertisments etc. Printed on newsprint. Reprinted 1976. Large Format Softcover. Illus. by With Line Drawings Advertisments Atc.. 8 1/2" By 11" Tall. Arno Press/Simon & Schuster 0405076800
597 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1986
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February 24, 2023973.8 Coh
July 17, 2014
In this rather large tome (597 pgs), the author examines & compares the contents of the Sears Roebuck catalogs from 1905-1935 to develop sociological theories about how the population has changed in those 30 years. Major categories include the shift in transportation from the horse & buggy to the automobile; entertainment activities from sheet music and instruments, through phonographs up to the radio; women's fashions from the Gibson girl to the flappers; typewriters & their influence on women in the workplace and leisure activities in the man's world (firearms and sports).
Cohn writes with a dryly humourous style, gently poking fun at some of the more unusual fads of those thirty years and becoming a bit more pointed when examining advertising gimmicks and installment payment plans. He demonstrates fairly clearly that Sears Roebuck and other mail order outfits had an amazing influence over the development of American commerce from the late 1800's into the first third of the twentieth century. I'd love to see something like this carried through to the modern day. I would have liked a lot more pictures - the illustrations are sparsely sprinkled throughout
This book is still available thru Amazon, if as a pricey special order. Check your local library, if you're interested. Recommended to students of commerce and advertising, as well as nostalgia addicts.
Quotes
[on evangelism]" ... everywhere it lies below the surface of the souls of the people capable of being evoked and brought to the top, in times of national stress, by the sonorous voices of eloquent preachers, whether lay, gospel or political. .... it throws some light on the reason why Americans - as contradistinguished from Europeans - are more easily moved by moral outrage inflicted upon helpless nations or minorities than they are by their coldly logical national interests."
[NOTE: the publication date of this book is 1940.]
"In no country of the world, perhaps, is personality so much worshiped as in the United States, and, at the same time nowhere (until the rise of totalitarian states of Europe) is there so little of it. We want to be different and yet all alike."
"One more difference between the manners of 1905 and 1935 remains to be noted. In the earlier period, a gentleman who gave a gift to a lady within the permitted degrees of consanguinity or love laid the money on the line. If he did not get gratitude in return, he also got no bills. but in 1935, a guy bought thrills for a gal on the installment plan and hoped they would hold out at least until he had made the last payment."
"The unhappy-looking ladies sketched in the corset pages of the 1905 catalog have pulled-in wasp waists and what was then called a "big bust", while their well-tempered clavichords, propelled into space by the constriction of their middles, project at an angle that would be dangerous in this period of crowded streets and practically impossible in modern small apartments."
Cohn writes with a dryly humourous style, gently poking fun at some of the more unusual fads of those thirty years and becoming a bit more pointed when examining advertising gimmicks and installment payment plans. He demonstrates fairly clearly that Sears Roebuck and other mail order outfits had an amazing influence over the development of American commerce from the late 1800's into the first third of the twentieth century. I'd love to see something like this carried through to the modern day. I would have liked a lot more pictures - the illustrations are sparsely sprinkled throughout
This book is still available thru Amazon, if as a pricey special order. Check your local library, if you're interested. Recommended to students of commerce and advertising, as well as nostalgia addicts.
Quotes
[on evangelism]" ... everywhere it lies below the surface of the souls of the people capable of being evoked and brought to the top, in times of national stress, by the sonorous voices of eloquent preachers, whether lay, gospel or political. .... it throws some light on the reason why Americans - as contradistinguished from Europeans - are more easily moved by moral outrage inflicted upon helpless nations or minorities than they are by their coldly logical national interests."
[NOTE: the publication date of this book is 1940.]
"In no country of the world, perhaps, is personality so much worshiped as in the United States, and, at the same time nowhere (until the rise of totalitarian states of Europe) is there so little of it. We want to be different and yet all alike."
"One more difference between the manners of 1905 and 1935 remains to be noted. In the earlier period, a gentleman who gave a gift to a lady within the permitted degrees of consanguinity or love laid the money on the line. If he did not get gratitude in return, he also got no bills. but in 1935, a guy bought thrills for a gal on the installment plan and hoped they would hold out at least until he had made the last payment."
"The unhappy-looking ladies sketched in the corset pages of the 1905 catalog have pulled-in wasp waists and what was then called a "big bust", while their well-tempered clavichords, propelled into space by the constriction of their middles, project at an angle that would be dangerous in this period of crowded streets and practically impossible in modern small apartments."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews