excerpt from Ron's e-book
Life in America, According to the 1897 Sears Catalogue
If you want to understand middle-class life in the 1890s, you’d do well to thumb through the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. catalogue. The 1897 issue is 786 pages and sells everything from patent medicines to horse-drawn buggies. . . . .
As the catalogue makes clear, electricity saw scant use in even the most sophisticated home. Under the heading “electrical goods,” Sears offers only five telegraph relays, a couple of door bells, a handful of batteries and switches, and four motors for fans. Second to overhead lights, household fans would become the most popular electric appliance until the 1920s, when manufacturers would start widely marketing toasters, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and sewing machines.
The washing machine as we know it wasn't widespread until the 1950s. Vacuums were a novelty and/or luxury until about the same time.
In short, none of the appliances we take for granted were available to the housewife of the 1890s. Though there were many manual carpet sweepers—“cheap as a broom”--the only way to get a rug reasonably clean was to hang it in the back yard and beat it until the dust ceased billowing.
The electric iron, marketed in 1893, was still too new and strange for the average middle-class home and, in fact, wasn’t even offered by Sears in 1897. Instead, there was the old solid-iron utility called a “sad iron” because it was as heavy as 15 pounds. The housewife heated her iron atop her cast iron stove, which had to be fired and cleaned 24/7, consuming fifty pounds of coal or wood a day.
For more on the world according to Sears, go to Ron's Amazon page:
Quick Thumbnail Navigation
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Recommended Reading:
