The Hard Life of Peddlers
Today we live in an age of convenience. Everything from groceries to incubated eggs (yes, that’s a thing) are available for delivery right to your doorstep. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how we survived without companies like Uber or Amazon to deliver ourselves or the most inane items possible while barely lifting a finger.
Photo of a peddler in a cellar colorized by marina amaral, marinamaral.com
Obviously, before the turn of the 20th-century even finding a job could prove difficult, much less a bacon-scented mustache. That’s why many people lived life as itinerant peddlers, lugging on their back or horse powered carts all manner of goods. These peddlers often lived hard lives, sleeping wherever they could find a roof as well as marginally welcoming hosts. Sometimes they were even forced to sleep under their carts to stay out of the rain.
Sometimes Welcome, Sometimes Not
A peddler's wagon in the early days of America. (newyorkheritage)
As America expanded westward, peddlers functioned similarly to red blood cells in the body. However, instead of carrying oxygen to the body, they toted food, medicine, textiles, and just about anything they viewed as a saleable commodity. Unfortunately, for the traveling peddler, people didn’t always react as favorably as we do today when the mailman comes with a package. Despite the vital service peddlers provided, many people viewed them as untrustworthy. As the thinking went, anyone who traveled year round and lacked a true home should be met with a jaundiced eye.
Gypsy Fears
Peddlers earned the reputation of shrewd, hard-bargaining entrepreneurs.
To be a peddler bravery and boldness were required in heaping portions. Many of them traveled over a thousand miles in a year, usually by horse on roads that wouldn’t pass for goat paths today. The fear of bandits and thieves remained ever present, especially in the west where the law could come and go based on the sheriff. Even if they could avoid brigands all year they still never knew how towns would receive them. All it took was one deceitful or untrustworthy peddler to ruin their reputation within an isolated town. Stories of peddlers carrying off farm girls also put people on their guard.
Farm This
Selling what he can, where he can. (pinterest)
While the road presented many dangers, it also offered many opportunities. Buying useful commodities in one place, usually the more developed northeast, and taking it where no such goods existed, typically the south or wild west, could realize proceeds more than three times what they cost! Many of the early peddlers were willing to do anything to escape the inevitability of waking up before the sun and working on the farm all day. To survive as a peddler you need a powerful impetus to keep going as wild animals and rightfully vengeful Native Americans descended upon them in the most desolate parts of a growing country.
What To Carry?
Prior to the 1830s, most peddlers reportedly came from New England – hence the term Yankee peddler.
Peddlers needed to choose carefully what they packed on their long and hopefully prosperous journeys. Clearly, small items like buttons, pins, lace, razors, and combs granted them the ability to carry a higher volume of possessions. On the other hand, larger items such as chairs, clocks, or spinning wheels were more rare and, therefore, more profitable. The arrival of a peddler to a town would cause as stir as Richardson Wright described in his 1927 book, “Hawkers & Walkers in Early America. “Women dropped their chores and men their work, and they gathered about to hear gossip of the neighborhoods the peddler had recently left and to see his wares.”
Big City Peddlers
Littleton, N.H. - Photographed and published by Kilburn Brothers, c.1889. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
If a person had a knack for sales but the road weary life held little appeal, working as a street peddler in a big city also remained an option. Unfortunately, for the non-itinerant peddler, the upside for big sales many multiples of their cost diminished greatly. They would need some measure of backing to purchase the goods necessary for sales and survive on much smaller margins. Working in a big city did allow for many more customers but just as many competitors. Often peddlers in big cities lived life on the edge of destitution, only making sales on items they could salvage or steal.
Unscrupulous Or Savvy?
Peddlers sold a bevy of items including pins, clocks, cloth, gunpowder buttons, and much more.
Since big city peddlers faced such long odds, they frequently delved into less than honest business practices. Cigars made from oak leaves rather than tobacco, cheese consisting of White Oak, and crop seeds of tiny wood chips represented a few of their profitable scams. Of course, traveling peddlers also worked as nearly as many rackets. The on the go nature of their work lent itself to taking advantage of southern bumpkins and moving on before they caught on.
Damn Yankees
Many of the early peddlers were jewish. (researchgate)
The phrase “Damn Yankees” originated from southerners cursing the northern peddlers after being taken advantage of. An early 1800s magazine from London described the American sentiment of peddlers. “Even the Americans themselves do not estimate very highly the character of their peddlers, owing, no doubt, to the many ingenious frauds and deceptions which some of them have, from time to time, been detected in.”
Peddling Changes
Many apocryphal stories rose from dealings with traveling peddlers.
As the 20th century went on, life as a peddler changed drastically. The development of roads and other infrastructures made life safer for peddlers but also less profitable. As the risks lessened, larger companies got in on the act. Peddlers became employees, paid salaries and commissioned to work under the relative safety of a larger company’s umbrella. More and more people flocked to life on the road, giving birth to America’s corporate sales force. In big cities, shops lined the streets, pushing peddlers further into the margins. Still, for a few hundred years, yo ho, yo ho, it was a peddler’s life for many.
The photo at the top of this story was colorized by Marina Amaral, a digital colorist who has published two books, The Color of Time and The World Aflame. See more of her colorized photos and learn about her other projects at marinamaral.com.
