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Article: Mail-Order Houses
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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MAIL-ORDER HOUSES
MAIL-ORDER HOUSES.
Mail-order houses, along with department stores and chain stores, were the most important innovations in retailing institutions during the late nineteenth century. Unlike the other two, however, mail-order houses were essentially a unique American phenomenon in their extent and significance. Indeed, because the majority of Americans still lived in rural settings before the 1920s, they often first experienced the emerging national consumer culture through the medium of the mail-order catalog
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or, as many called it, the "wish book."
Montgomery Ward and Sears
Before the 1860s a few firms (for example, patent medicine vendors) advertised the ...