The Role of the Traveling Salesman in America
In the United States, the era of the traveling peddler probably peaked in the decades just before the American Civil War. The large advances in industrial mass production and freight transportation as a result of the war laid the groundwork for the beginnings of modern retail and distribution networks. Further, the rise of popular mail order catalogues (e.g. Montgomery Ward began in 1872) offered another way for people in rural or other remote areas to obtain items not readily available in local stores.
The life of a traveling salesman in the mid to late 19th century was far from romantic. Transportation generally consisted of a day coach on a train and then a horse and buggy provided by the local livery stable for local travel. Many salesmen were away from their homes and loved ones for months on end. It was a rough and often hazardous way to make a living as accidents – often fatal accidents - occurred frequently.
The business of sales has been a vital part of America's economy since the country's earliest years. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, salesmen accounted for a large part of commerce in both the countryside and in growing American cities. Many spent their lives on the road selling goods -- encyclopedias, sewing machines, pots and pans and more.
By the early twentieth century, the traveling salesman had become a familiar -- and sometimes comical -- image in America. Salesmen were considered slick and untrustworthy, peddling cure-all elixirs and overpriced Bibles. Yet at the turn of the century, the direct selling business expanded and became more organized. Small outfits like the Fuller Brush Company, which sold cleaners, brushes and mops, went national. Men in every region of the country set out to sell Fuller Brush products to every American household.
Frank Stanley Beveridge, a successful Fuller Brush salesman, saw the potential in door-to-door selling. In 1931 he opened his own cleaning supplies company, called Stanley Home Products. Based in western Massachusetts, the company followed in its predecessors' footsteps, sending men out knocking on doors and selling to housewives.
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Born November 13, 1810 in Richford, New York, John Davison Rockefeller was the second of six children to parents William and Eliza. William was a traveling salesman in the business of selling such suspect things as cancer cures.
By the late 1880s, carpet sweepers appeared. In the early 1900s, carpet cleaning became a door-to-door business. The very first equipment was so large it was drawn by horse and parked on the curb outside of the home or business being cleaned.
Johnston & Murphy (expensive shoes) developed a network of traveling salesmen, many of whom began calling on America's most renowned universities and established country clubs.
In late nineteenth-century America, physicians were scarce and poorly educated. Treatments were based on the now-discredited theory of the four bodily humors that had to be kept in balance. These might include such treatments as bleeding (sometimes using live leeches), cold baths, blistering agents, and other remedies that were worse than the ailments that they were meant to treat! Many people placed their faith in patent medicines, pitched by traveling salesmen who never failed to entertain the crowds before offering cure-alls.
Selling door-to-door is not a popular career path today, because, unlike the 1950's, few people are at home during the day and online methods have prevailed.