1910's Lifestyles and Social Trends

The New Retailing and its Detractors


Speed and Economy.

By 1910 three innovations in the way Americans did their shopping were already familiar

Mission Style Furniture, the style that most complimented the sturdy, airy architecture of the 1910s, was often made of oak and characterized by vertical slats. © Corbis-Bettmann.
to many people: the department store, the mail-order house, and the chain store. A radical departure from centuries of small local merchants, these mechanisms for mass distribution of mass-produced goods often lowered prices and improved quality. These enterprises bypassed wholesalers and aggressively marketed directly to the consumer. Each store had its own advertising department, and when it purchased name-brand goods from manufacturers, the price included a fee for "cooperative advertising." For the...

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