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How the Sears Catalog Undermined White Supremacy in the Jim Crow South

106 points by smacktoward 8y ago

danso 8y ago
Reading that Twitter thread got me interested in (at some later time) digging into the minutiae of how the catalogs were designed, produced, and distributed over the years. Once again, the Internet Archive does not disappoint, with what looks like a decent collection of scanned catalogs: https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Sears%2C+Roebuck+and+Company%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Sears%2C+R... edit: Googling for "the history of sears" brings up a site named Sears Archives. I can't tell if it is official or not, but it does seem to be very comprehensive: http://www.searsarchives.com/ http://www.searsarchives.com/
mortenjorck 8y ago
Thought experiment: If Sears had had access to modern e-commerce targeting algorithms a century ago, is it possible that some of the progressive effects of the catalog might never have been realized? Imagine algorithms identifying poor and black customers and promoting products that were already popular for those demographics, making it harder to discover other locally-unavailable products like musical instruments.
- IBM 8y ago
  I think that's already happened. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...
  - freewilly1040 8y ago
    In both of the articles you mention the biased effects were quickly remediated.
- skybrian 8y ago
  Maybe, but if you search for "trumpet" you will still probably see trumpets, so compared to other forms of discrimination, maybe it's not so significant? One area where poorer people do get charged more is for loans.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Maybe if they also had access to modern production capabilities, warehousing, and picking techniques? My impression is that the Sears catalog represented literally everything the Sears company sold in a single volume, and it was still so cheap to produce that there may not have been much incentive to print different versions for different markets, even if you could differentiate.
gwern 8y ago
> The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. > > The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
vanderZwan 8y ago
I keep reading stories about Sears in how it compares to Amazon, but what I wonder and have never seen discussed is whether Sears was a local American phenomenon, or if there were other companies like it globally around the same time?
- wpietri 8y ago
  Good question! Turns out Wikipedia has some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order

106 points by smacktoward 8y ago

Reading that Twitter thread got me interested in (at some later time) digging into the minutiae of how the catalogs were designed, produced, and distributed over the years. Once again, the Internet Archive does not disappoint, with what looks like a decent collection of scanned catalogs: https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Sears%2C+Roebuck+and+Company%22 https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Sears%2C+R... edit: Googling for "the history of sears" brings up a site named Sears Archives. I can't tell if it is official or not, but it does seem to be very comprehensive: http://www.searsarchives.com/ http://www.searsarchives.com/

mortenjorck 8y ago

Thought experiment: If Sears had had access to modern e-commerce targeting algorithms a century ago, is it possible that some of the progressive effects of the catalog might never have been realized? Imagine algorithms identifying poor and black customers and promoting products that were already popular for those demographics, making it harder to discover other locally-unavailable products like musical instruments.

IBM 8y ago
I think that's already happened. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-amazon-same-day/ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automatio...
- freewilly1040 8y ago
  In both of the articles you mention the biased effects were quickly remediated.
skybrian 8y ago
Maybe, but if you search for "trumpet" you will still probably see trumpets, so compared to other forms of discrimination, maybe it's not so significant? One area where poorer people do get charged more is for loans.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Maybe if they also had access to modern production capabilities, warehousing, and picking techniques? My impression is that the Sears catalog represented literally everything the Sears company sold in a single volume, and it was still so cheap to produce that there may not have been much incentive to print different versions for different markets, even if you could differentiate.

gwern 8y ago

> The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. > > The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

vanderZwan 8y ago

I keep reading stories about Sears in how it compares to Amazon, but what I wonder and have never seen discussed is whether Sears was a local American phenomenon, or if there were other companies like it globally around the same time?

wpietri 8y ago
Good question! Turns out Wikipedia has some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order