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Manufacturer's Drummer, 1852, With Comments on Western and Southern Markets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Extract
Changes in the role of the commercial drummer during the thirty years prior to the Civil War are suggested by comparison of reports received from a salesman in the 1850's with similar reports received from a salesman for the same firm in the 1830's. The trips and reports of the earlier salesman, who traveled for J. M. L. & W. H. Scovill, a Connecticut brass rolling and fabricating partnership, were described in the last issue of this Bulletin. The chief complaint of the salesman in the 1830's was that the merchants of any importance made regular trips to Philadelphia or New York. Such merchants preferred to make all their purchases at one time in order to save trouble and expense in transportation and they also bought most of their goods from established jobbers to whom they were known and who would extend credit.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1948
References
Authors Note: A grant from the Princeton University Committee on Research has been of assistance in the preparation of this article.
1 “Manufacturer's Drummer, 1832,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, vol. xxii, no. 2 (April, 1948), pp. 40–56.
2 See, e.g., Gras, N. S. B., Business and Capitalism (New York, 1939), pp. 195–200.Google Scholar Documentation for a specific case of such transfer from commission agency to wholesalers by a metal products firm in the year 1843 is given for Reed and Barton in Gibb, G. S., The Whitesmiths of Taunton, Harvard Studies in Business History (Cambridge, 1943). p. 164.Google Scholar
3 An index of domestic trade shows a rise of only one point, from 93 to 94, in 1852 as compared with 1851; this rose another 7 points for 1853. See Smith, W. B. and Cole, A. H., Fluctuations in American Business, 1790-1860 (Cambridge, 1935), p. 104.Google Scholar An index of copper sheathing prices shows a comparable movement, with the greater part of the change in 1852 occurring during the latter part of the year. See Cole, A. H., Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700-1861 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 325–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Philadelphia monthly prices of non-ferrous metals and their products have been tallied. These may suggest the course also of New York prices. Those in Philadelphia rose very moderately during the year except for the last month when there was a sharp increase. See Bezanson, Anne, Gray, Robert D. and Hussey, Miriam, Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia, 1784-1861 (Philadelphia, 1936), p. 380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The Scovill sales of 1851 were $285,000; for 1852, $307,500; and for 1853, $392,000. Quantitative data on sales after 1850 have been furnished the writer by Professor P. W. Bishop of Yale University.
4 The Mercantile Agency was organized in 1841, and Robert G. Dun joined the firm in 1854. Service in the South and West was offered a few years later. At about that same time John M. Bradstreet started his agency in St. Louis. See Hidy, Muriel, “The Capital Markets, 1789-1860,” in Williamson, Harold F., editor, The Growth of the American Economy (New York, 1944), p. 297.Google Scholar At the time of Holmes' visit to Cincinnati both the Bradstreet concern and B. Douglas & Co. were listed in the city directory as mercantile agencies. See Williams' Cincinnati Directory (Cincinnati, 18S3), p. 294.
5 S. Holmes to G. Mallory, December 4, 1852. All the Holmes letters are quoted from the documents in the archives of the Scovill Manufacturing Company, Waterbury, Connecticut. Acknowledgment is due the Executive Offices for courtesy in permitting examination of these documents.
6 This rate amounts to approximately 4½¢ per mile, which is more than double the per-mile rate between Buffalo and Niagara Falls four years earlier, quoted in MacGill, C. E., et al., History of Transportation in the United States Before 1860 (Washington, 1917), p. 580.Google Scholar
7 In the rivalry between Chicago and St. Louis attention must be given the matter of facilities for trade or storing goods, with Chicago's leadership perhaps most marked in the handling of grain. See Belcher, W. W., The Economic Rivalry between St. Louis and Chicago, 1850-1880 (New York, 1947), p. 103et passim.Google Scholar
8 Dunbar, Seymour, History of Travel in America (Indianapolis, 1915, 4 vols.), vol. iii, p. 1088.Google Scholar
9 The broader lines of development toward specialization in midwest markets are indicated in Gras, N. S. B. and Larson, H. M., Casebook in Business History (New York, 1939), pp. 385 ff.Google Scholar
10 See the writer's “Commission Agents in the Button and Brass Trade a Century Ago,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, vol. xvi, no. 1 (Feb., 1942), p. 8. In 1929 two-thirds of the sales of manufacturers of non-ferrous metals and their products were made directly to industrial users. Further historical data on this procedure would make possible a more complete treatment of a practice sometimes summarily handled in marketing texts. On the other hand, see a somewhat more detailed treatment in Phillips, C. F., editor, Marketing by Manufacturers (Chicago, 1947), pp. 34 ff.Google Scholar, and particularly pp. 178–186.