“Little Miss Fannie Allison Troutsmans writes that she’s lonesome and wish to hear from Comfort visitors,” the line starts. “She claims this woman is the youngest of ten kids of who four just you live, and adds that her oldest cousin, a conductor from the Southern Railroad, ended up being killed by a train at Spartanburg, S.C.”
The appeal to readers that are fellow at the opening regarding the July 1907 “Comfort Sisters’ Corner,” a staple of Comfort Magazine. The columnist includes skip Fannie’s words that are own as well as a address in new york where “sisters” could address letters. In identical pages, one girl asked for souvenir post cards and letters, while another requested “seeds of the most extremely popular variety… or any antique plants, such as for example our grandmothers enjoyed.”
The column went for numerous pages, brief paragraphs in small font sandwiched among the list of advertisements that are numerous. Comfort, most likely, wasn’t just a woman’s log; it absolutely was a magazine that is mail-order primary function would be to bring customer tradition to rural America by marketing kitchen appliances, clothing, medications along with other items. The publisher that is original William Gannett, actually developed Comfort in an effort to market their neurological tonic to women. Yet because is obvious in columns like “Comfort Sisters’ Corner,” those quasi-catalogues included a surprising side effects: interaction between ladies that otherwise will have been impossible.
When you look at the years following a Civil War, rapidly advancing printing press technology plus a growing postal delivery community permitted the sheer number of magazines into the U.S. to explode. Whereas just 700 publications existed in 1865 (including Harper’s Weekly, Confederate Veteran and Southern Historical Society Papers), they numbered significantly more than 3,000 by 1885, and much more than 4,400 by 1890. Those figures, plus the blood circulation of publications, proceeded to increase given that united states of america Postal provider started tinkering with Rural Free Delivery in the 1890s, bringing mail right to the 65 % regarding the populace whom lived in rural areas as opposed to making the mail at drop-off points. (It wasn’t until 1920 that the census discovered more folks staying in metropolitan areas—towns with an increase of than 2,500 inhabitants—than in rural areas.)
One of the mail-order that is first to surface in the post-Civil War years had been E.C. Allen’s People’s Literary Companion, printed in Augusta, Maine and distributed all over country beginning in 1869. As a result of Allen’s pioneering work with Maine, Augusta became a hub for posting, with 17 games printed when you look at the city, reaching a circulation that is maximum of 3 million. Not merely had been the publications written mainly for females, they certainly were frequently created by women aswell: associated with 1,309 individuals employed in the publishing industry statewide in 1900, ladies accounted for 615, just below 50 %. It had been even stated that Allen himself, the “Mail Order King,” required the opinion of female clerks whenever he decided a photo for circulation in their mags, writes Robert Lovett when you look at the Bulletin associated with the continuing business Historical Society.
“Comfort Sisters’ Corner” was a basic of Comfort Magazine. (Digital Library @ Villanova University)
However the publications moving away from Augusta, with names like Thrifty Farmer, United states Woman, Golden Moments and Comfort, had been frequently low priced, shoddily printed rags meant to turn rural females and families into customers. Publishers would send them free of charge to one-time customers, printing advertisements with their magazines in other mags, and provide incentives for enrolling brand brand new readers, which permitted how many visitors to cultivate rapidly—whether or perhaps not the publications had been really being look over. When compared with mass blood circulation women’s journals like Ladies’ Home Journal and Delineator, writers of those mail-order publications cared less about readers renewing their subscriptions than about having huge blood supply listings with which to entice advertisers. And even though Good Housekeeping and journals enjoy it truly crammed adverts on as much pages as you are able to, those publications also hewed more closely to an editorial objective of providing visitors with housekeeping advice, substantive fiction and poetry, and columns on fashion.
As advertising analysts Ernest Elmo Calkins and Ralph Holden penned of Ladies’ Residence Journal and Comfort, the 2 different publications represented “extreme kinds of magazines and their particular constituencies; the main one, the type that is highest of a marketing medium… reaching well-educated, well-to-do, smart US ladies; the other, poorly printed… and reaching an uneducated and credulous class whose readers purchase only many affordable things, but more and more them do purchase, so your area is really worth just exactly just what it costs the advertisers.”
Mary Ellen Zuckerman, a teacher of advertising during the State University of brand new York, Geneseo and composer of a brief history of Popular Women’s mags in the us, 1792-1995, acknowledges that both kinds of magazines added to your flooding of customer products reaching markets that are rural. But, she states, “In a funny method, the mail-order publications were very nearly more truthful about their function. You knew whenever you first got it it was likely to be filled up with a complete great deal of marketing.”
Have a book like Comfort. It had been among the first mags to attain a blood circulation of over one million, billing just 15 cents for the subscription that is yearlong month-to-month editions regarding the mag. As librarian Clara Carter Weber writes, “Comfort was at company to offer all you could consider, from sheet music, parlor organs, and peanuts, to an ‘oil portraiture’ of Admiral Dewey and a ‘Magical Sponge,’ the ‘wonder associated with the twentieth century.’” Peruse all pages and posts of old editions of Comfort and you’ll find adverts supplying a totally free pocket watch for people prepared to offer bluing dye for laundry, and “Duby’s Ozark Herbs” to dye gray hairs without coloring the scalp, and low priced fur scarves and muffs, and medical remedies like Dr. Coffee’s 80-page attention book to cure all eye conditions.
But surrounding those adverts had been brief tales and recurring columns, like “Talks with Girls” and “Poultry Farming for ladies.” Really, Zuckerman claims, the magazines that are mail-order also kinds of interaction.
Comfort’s primary function would be to bring customer tradition to America that is rural by kitchen appliances, clothes, medications along with other products. (Digital Library @ Villanova University)
“If you see the everyday lives associated with the ladies on these farms, most of the time in and day trip these were separated. Reading these magazines ended up being a interaction lifeline in a real method,” Zuckerman says. For us right now to comprehend, because we’re therefore inundated with methods of communicating.“If you can write in and find out one thing you had written in publications, and discover other females currently talking about things of great interest or concern for your requirements, it offered a tremendously strong connection that’s difficult”
Just look at the phone, conceived by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. During the change associated with century, just 10 percent of all of the households also had phone solutions. For females residing on farms definately not anybody however their family unit members, mail-order magazines offered a getaway from everyday life, and in addition ways to produce a concrete link with other lonely females. In addition to “Comfort Sisters’ Corner,” another feature that is regular of mag had been demands from “Shut-Ins”—women too unwell or old to go out of their homes, whom depended in the charity of next-door next-door neighbors as well as other visitors for success. “I intend to consider the shut-in whenever i will,” writes Edna Peterson of Biggsville, Illinois into the July 1907 edition.
But despite having the interaction they offered women that are rural mail-order mags weren’t destined for durability. Many ceased publication after 1907, if the Post Office needed listings https://www.latinwomen.net of compensated readers for publications seeking a reduced mailing price. One of the mail-order publications that survived the culling had been Woman’s World and Comfort, both of which lasted until 1940.
“I think they outlived their function,” Zuckerman suggests. “As roadways improved and folks had better transport, they certainly were able to access bigger towns and urban centers to complete their shopping, so that they didn’t need certainly to count on mail purchase. It’s ironic because now we’ve circled back with Amazon. Everyone desires to do shopping from your home and never head out.”
As transport technology changed, so too did communications. By 1948, the usa had 30 million connected phones, and reaching out to friends from afar had been growing easier, even yet in rural areas. Catalogs like Sears and Montgomery Ward became the brand new solution to make domestic acquisitions. But also for a period that is brief mail-order publications had played an essential part for rural ladies: making them feel less alone to their farms and homesteads, and empowering them to talk about their experiences with others.