Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-03T21:22:59.092Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Larkin Clubs of Ten: Consumer Buying Clubs and Mail-Order Commerce, 1890–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Howard R. Stanger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The direct selling industry has a long history, with roots snaking back to the nineteenth-century “Yankee peddlers” who roamed the countryside selling tools, teas, and liniments door-to-door. Its reputation has suffered from the prevalence of misleading and illegal schemes such as pyramids, which generate income by paying money or other compensation solely for the act of recruiting, charge high entrance fees, and sell products of questionable value. Nonetheless, some advocates note that direct sales work, which often involves family and flexible working hours, has provided an excellent alternative to the traditional bureaucratic employment relationship that has historically been less receptive to women.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 125 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Altman, Violet and Seymour, . The Book of Buffalo Pottery. New York, 1969.Google Scholar
Barron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870–1930. Chapel Hill, 1997.Google Scholar
Bean, Jonathan J. Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies Toward Small Business, 1936–1961. Chapel Hill, 1996.Google Scholar
Biggart, Nicole Woolsey. Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America. Chicago, 1989.Google Scholar
Blanke, David. Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture took Root in the Rural Midwest. Athens, Ohio, 2000.Google Scholar
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York, 1974.Google Scholar
Brown, Dorothy M. Setting the Course: American Women in the 1920s. Boston, 1987.Google Scholar
Calder, Lendol. Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit. Princeton, 1999.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, 1977.Google Scholar
Clarke, Alison J. Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America. Washington, D.C., 1999.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding ofModern Feminism. New Haven, Conn., 1987.Google Scholar
Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore, Md., 1995.Google Scholar
Dicke, Thomas S. Franchising in America: The Development of a Business Method 1840–1980. Chapel Hill, 1992.Google Scholar
Elvins, Sarah. Sales and Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940. Athens, Ohio, 2004.Google Scholar
Emmet, Boris and Jeuck, John E.Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company. Chicago, 1950.Google Scholar
Friedman, Waltar A. Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. Cambridge, 2004.Google Scholar
Fuller, Wayne E. RFD: The ChangingFace of Rural America. Bloomington, Ind., 1964.Google Scholar
Garvey, Ellen Gruber. The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s–1910s. New York, 1996.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Greenwald, Maureen. Women, War and Work: The Impact ofWorld War Ion Women Workers in the United States. Ithaca, 1980.Google Scholar
Hayward, Walter, and White, Percival. Chain Stores: Their Management and Operation. New York, 1922.Google Scholar
Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Lisa. Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the EarlyTwentieth Century. New York, 2004.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
King, Charles W., and Robinson, James W. The New Professionals: The Rise of Network Marketing As the Next Major Profession. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
Kline, Ronald. Consumers in the Country: Technologyand Social Change in Rural America. Baltimore, Md., 2000.Google Scholar
Laird, Pamela Walker. Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing. Baltimore, Md., 1998.Google Scholar
Larkin, Daniel D., and Larkin, John D. A Business Pioneer. Amherst, 1998. William, Leach. Land of Desire: Merchants Power and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Lebhar, Godfrey M. Chain Stores in America: 1859–1962. NewYork, 1962.Google Scholar
Longstreth, Richard. City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950. Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
Matt, Susan J. Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890–1930. Philadelphia, Penn., 2003.Google Scholar
Mayo, James M. The American GroceryStores: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space. Westport, Conn., 1993.Google Scholar
Mohl, Raymond. The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age, 1860–1920. Wheeling, Ill., 1985.Google Scholar
Moskowitz, Marina. Standard ofLiving: The Measure ofthe Middle Class in Modern America. Baltimore, Md., 2004.Google Scholar
Neth, Mary. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900–1940. Baltimore, Md., 1995.Google Scholar
Norris, James. Advertising and the Transformation ofAmerican Society, 1865–1920. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Nystrom, Paul H. Chain Stores. Washington, D.C., 1930.Google Scholar
Nystrom, Paul H. Economics of Retailing. Vol. 1. New York, 1930.Google Scholar
Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making ofAmericas BeautyCulture. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Porter, Glenn and Livesay, Harold Merchants and Manufacturers: Studies in the ChangingStructure ofNineteenth-CenturyMarketing. Baltimore, Md., 1971.Google Scholar
Quinan, Jack Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact. Cambridge, 1987.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Janice Williams. Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household Efficiency. Athens, Ohio, 2003.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Jennifer. Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of the Consumer Culture. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Shannon, Matthew. One Hundred Years of Premium Promotions, 1851–1951. New York, 1951.Google Scholar
Smulyan, Susan. Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934. Washington, D.C., 1994.Google Scholar
Spears, Timothy. 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in the American Culture. New Haven, Conn., 1995.Google Scholar
Strasser, Susan. Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. Washington, DC, 1989.Google Scholar
Tedlow, Richard S. New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Walsh, William I. The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Secaucus, N.J., 1986.Google Scholar
Xardel, Dominique. The Direct Selling Revolution: Understanding the Growth ofthe Amway Corporation. Cambridge, 1993.Google Scholar
Adams-Webber, Margot. “The Larkin Company and Mail Order Marketing in 1916.” In Proceedings 17 no. 24 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Conference. Montreal, Quebec, 1996,1–1.Google Scholar
Adams-Webber, Margot. “Soap Slingers, Drummers and Agents: Larkin Company Merchandising, 1875–1885.” In Marketing History Knows No Bounds: Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Historical Research in Marketing and Marketing Thought. East Lansing, Mich., 1997, 123–32.Google Scholar
Bullock, Roy J. “The Early History of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.” Harvard Business Review 11 (April 1933): 289–98.Google Scholar
Bushman, Richard L., and Bushman, Claudia L. “The Early History of Cleanliness in America.” The Journal ofAmerican History 74 (March 1988): 1213–38.Google Scholar
Clarke, Alison. “Tupperware: Suburbia, Sociality, and Mass Consumption.” In Visions of Suburbia, ed. Silverstone, Roger. London, 1997, pp.132–60.Google Scholar
Dyer, Stephanie. Markets in the Meadow: Department Stores and Shopping Centers in the Decentralization of Philadelphia, 1920’1980.” Enterprise and Society 3 (December 2002): 606–12.Google Scholar
Graham, Margaret. “The Threshold of the Information Age: Radio, Television and Motion Pictures Mobilize the Nation.” In ANation Transformed ByInformation: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Chandler, Alfred D Jr. and Cortada, James W. New York, 2000, pp. 137–76.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Lisa. “Manly Boys and Enterprising Dreamers: Business Ideology and the Construction of the Boy Consumer, 1910–1930.” Enterprise and Society 2 (June 2000): 22558.Google Scholar
Leach, William. “Transformations in a Culture of Composition: Women and Department Stores, 1890–1925.” The Journal of American History 71 (2) (September 1984): 319–42.Google Scholar
Manko, Katina “Now You are in Business for Yourself: The Independent Contractors of the California Perfume Company, 1886–1938.” Business and Economic History 26 (1) (Fall 1997): 5–26.Google Scholar
Quinan, Jack. “Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft.” In Head, Heart and Hand: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters, ed. Via, Maria and Searl, Marjorie B. Minn, Rochester. 1994, pp. 1–19.Google Scholar
Ross, Thomas W. “Winners and Losers Under the Robinson-Patman Act.” Journal of Law and Economics 27 (October 1984): 243–71.Google Scholar
Schlereth, Thomas J. “Country Stores, Country Fairs, and Mail-Order Catalogues Consumption in Rural America.” In Consumer Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America 1880–1920,ed. Bronner, Simon J. New York, 1989, pp. 339–76.Google Scholar
Stanger, Howard. “From Factory to Family: The Creation of a Corporate Culture in the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York.” Business History Review 74 (Autumn 2000): 407–33.Google Scholar
Buffalo Evening News. 6 May 1937.Google Scholar
How to Succeed with Elmode Frocks: A Sales Manual for Elmode Frock Representatives. Ca. 1935.Google Scholar
Larkin Club-of-Ten Brochure. 1913.Google Scholar
Larkin Company Advertising Circular. 1899.Google Scholar
Larkin Company Catalog. Spring/Summer 1922.Google Scholar
The Larkin Family Magazine. May/September 1908.Google Scholar
The Larkin Idea. May 1903-April 1939.Google Scholar
Larkin Products and Premium Merchandise Catalog. Fall/Winter 1908-Fall/Winter 1925.Google Scholar
Ourselves. April 1908-February 1937.Google Scholar
Peoria Journal Transcript. June 1937.Google Scholar
Darwin, D. Martin Family Papers, 1878-1935. MS 22.6. University Archives, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.Google Scholar
Larkin Company Records. C-85-1. Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Buffalo, N.Y.Google Scholar
>Records of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Record Group 234. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park,Md.Records+of+the+Reconstruction+Finance+Corporation.+Record+Group+234.+The+U.S.+National+Archives+and+Records+Administration,+College+Park,Md.>Google Scholar
Schlei, Mildred. “The Larkin Company-A History.” M.A. Thesis, The State University of New York at University of Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.1932.Google Scholar
Warshaw Collection ofBusiness Americana, 60. Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute, Washington,D.C.Google Scholar
Altman, Violet and Seymour, . The Book of Buffalo Pottery. New York, 1969.Google Scholar
Barron, Hal S. Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870–1930. Chapel Hill, 1997.Google Scholar
Bean, Jonathan J. Beyond the Broker State: Federal Policies Toward Small Business, 1936–1961. Chapel Hill, 1996.Google Scholar
Biggart, Nicole Woolsey. Charismatic Capitalism: Direct Selling Organizations in America. Chicago, 1989.Google Scholar
Blanke, David. Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture took Root in the Rural Midwest. Athens, Ohio, 2000.Google Scholar
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York, 1974.Google Scholar
Brown, Dorothy M. Setting the Course: American Women in the 1920s. Boston, 1987.Google Scholar
Calder, Lendol. Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit. Princeton, 1999.Google Scholar
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, 1977.Google Scholar
Clarke, Alison J. Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America. Washington, D.C., 1999.Google Scholar
Cott, Nancy F. The Grounding ofModern Feminism. New Haven, Conn., 1987.Google Scholar
Danbom, David B. Born in the Country: A History of Rural America. Baltimore, Md., 1995.Google Scholar
Dicke, Thomas S. Franchising in America: The Development of a Business Method 1840–1980. Chapel Hill, 1992.Google Scholar
Elvins, Sarah. Sales and Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940. Athens, Ohio, 2004.Google Scholar
Emmet, Boris and Jeuck, John E.Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company. Chicago, 1950.Google Scholar
Friedman, Waltar A. Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America. Cambridge, 2004.Google Scholar
Fuller, Wayne E. RFD: The ChangingFace of Rural America. Bloomington, Ind., 1964.Google Scholar
Garvey, Ellen Gruber. The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s–1910s. New York, 1996.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Greenwald, Maureen. Women, War and Work: The Impact ofWorld War Ion Women Workers in the United States. Ithaca, 1980.Google Scholar
Hayward, Walter, and White, Percival. Chain Stores: Their Management and Operation. New York, 1922.Google Scholar
Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Lisa. Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the EarlyTwentieth Century. New York, 2004.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
King, Charles W., and Robinson, James W. The New Professionals: The Rise of Network Marketing As the Next Major Profession. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
Kline, Ronald. Consumers in the Country: Technologyand Social Change in Rural America. Baltimore, Md., 2000.Google Scholar
Laird, Pamela Walker. Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing. Baltimore, Md., 1998.Google Scholar
Larkin, Daniel D., and Larkin, John D. A Business Pioneer. Amherst, 1998. William, Leach. Land of Desire: Merchants Power and the Rise of a New American Culture. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Lebhar, Godfrey M. Chain Stores in America: 1859–1962. NewYork, 1962.Google Scholar
Longstreth, Richard. City Center to Regional Mall: Architecture, the Automobile, and Retailing in Los Angeles, 1920–1950. Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
Matt, Susan J. Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890–1930. Philadelphia, Penn., 2003.Google Scholar
Mayo, James M. The American GroceryStores: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space. Westport, Conn., 1993.Google Scholar
Mohl, Raymond. The New City: Urban America in the Industrial Age, 1860–1920. Wheeling, Ill., 1985.Google Scholar
Moskowitz, Marina. Standard ofLiving: The Measure ofthe Middle Class in Modern America. Baltimore, Md., 2004.Google Scholar
Neth, Mary. Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900–1940. Baltimore, Md., 1995.Google Scholar
Norris, James. Advertising and the Transformation ofAmerican Society, 1865–1920. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Nystrom, Paul H. Chain Stores. Washington, D.C., 1930.Google Scholar
Nystrom, Paul H. Economics of Retailing. Vol. 1. New York, 1930.Google Scholar
Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making ofAmericas BeautyCulture. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Porter, Glenn and Livesay, Harold Merchants and Manufacturers: Studies in the ChangingStructure ofNineteenth-CenturyMarketing. Baltimore, Md., 1971.Google Scholar
Quinan, Jack Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building: Myth and Fact. Cambridge, 1987.Google Scholar
Rutherford, Janice Williams. Selling Mrs. Consumer: Christine Frederick and the Rise of Household Efficiency. Athens, Ohio, 2003.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Jennifer. Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal, Gender and the Promises of the Consumer Culture. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Shannon, Matthew. One Hundred Years of Premium Promotions, 1851–1951. New York, 1951.Google Scholar
Smulyan, Susan. Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting, 1920–1934. Washington, D.C., 1994.Google Scholar
Spears, Timothy. 100 Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in the American Culture. New Haven, Conn., 1995.Google Scholar
Strasser, Susan. Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. Washington, DC, 1989.Google Scholar
Tedlow, Richard S. New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Walsh, William I. The Rise and Decline of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Secaucus, N.J., 1986.Google Scholar
Xardel, Dominique. The Direct Selling Revolution: Understanding the Growth ofthe Amway Corporation. Cambridge, 1993.Google Scholar
Adams-Webber, Margot. “The Larkin Company and Mail Order Marketing in 1916.” In Proceedings 17 no. 24 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada Conference. Montreal, Quebec, 1996,1–1.Google Scholar
Adams-Webber, Margot. “Soap Slingers, Drummers and Agents: Larkin Company Merchandising, 1875–1885.” In Marketing History Knows No Bounds: Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Historical Research in Marketing and Marketing Thought. East Lansing, Mich., 1997, 123–32.Google Scholar
Bullock, Roy J. “The Early History of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.” Harvard Business Review 11 (April 1933): 289–98.Google Scholar
Bushman, Richard L., and Bushman, Claudia L. “The Early History of Cleanliness in America.” The Journal ofAmerican History 74 (March 1988): 1213–38.Google Scholar
Clarke, Alison. “Tupperware: Suburbia, Sociality, and Mass Consumption.” In Visions of Suburbia, ed. Silverstone, Roger. London, 1997, pp.132–60.Google Scholar
Dyer, Stephanie. Markets in the Meadow: Department Stores and Shopping Centers in the Decentralization of Philadelphia, 1920’1980.” Enterprise and Society 3 (December 2002): 606–12.Google Scholar
Graham, Margaret. “The Threshold of the Information Age: Radio, Television and Motion Pictures Mobilize the Nation.” In ANation Transformed ByInformation: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present, ed. Chandler, Alfred D Jr. and Cortada, James W. New York, 2000, pp. 137–76.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Lisa. “Manly Boys and Enterprising Dreamers: Business Ideology and the Construction of the Boy Consumer, 1910–1930.” Enterprise and Society 2 (June 2000): 22558.Google Scholar
Leach, William. “Transformations in a Culture of Composition: Women and Department Stores, 1890–1925.” The Journal of American History 71 (2) (September 1984): 319–42.Google Scholar
Manko, Katina “Now You are in Business for Yourself: The Independent Contractors of the California Perfume Company, 1886–1938.” Business and Economic History 26 (1) (Fall 1997): 5–26.Google Scholar
Quinan, Jack. “Elbert Hubbard’s Roycroft.” In Head, Heart and Hand: Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters, ed. Via, Maria and Searl, Marjorie B. Minn, Rochester. 1994, pp. 1–19.Google Scholar
Ross, Thomas W. “Winners and Losers Under the Robinson-Patman Act.” Journal of Law and Economics 27 (October 1984): 243–71.Google Scholar
Schlereth, Thomas J. “Country Stores, Country Fairs, and Mail-Order Catalogues Consumption in Rural America.” In Consumer Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America 1880–1920,ed. Bronner, Simon J. New York, 1989, pp. 339–76.Google Scholar
Stanger, Howard. “From Factory to Family: The Creation of a Corporate Culture in the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York.” Business History Review 74 (Autumn 2000): 407–33.Google Scholar
Buffalo Evening News. 6 May 1937.Google Scholar
How to Succeed with Elmode Frocks: A Sales Manual for Elmode Frock Representatives. Ca. 1935.Google Scholar
Larkin Club-of-Ten Brochure. 1913.Google Scholar
Larkin Company Advertising Circular. 1899.Google Scholar
Larkin Company Catalog. Spring/Summer 1922.Google Scholar
The Larkin Family Magazine. May/September 1908.Google Scholar
The Larkin Idea. May 1903-April 1939.Google Scholar
Larkin Products and Premium Merchandise Catalog. Fall/Winter 1908-Fall/Winter 1925.Google Scholar
Ourselves. April 1908-February 1937.Google Scholar
Peoria Journal Transcript. June 1937.Google Scholar
Darwin, D. Martin Family Papers, 1878-1935. MS 22.6. University Archives, The State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.Google Scholar
Larkin Company Records. C-85-1. Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, Buffalo, N.Y.Google Scholar
>Records of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Record Group 234. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park,Md.Records+of+the+Reconstruction+Finance+Corporation.+Record+Group+234.+The+U.S.+National+Archives+and+Records+Administration,+College+Park,Md.>Google Scholar
Schlei, Mildred. “The Larkin Company-A History.” M.A. Thesis, The State University of New York at University of Buffalo, Buffalo, N.Y.1932.Google Scholar
Warshaw Collection ofBusiness Americana, 60. Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute, Washington,D.C.Google Scholar