How a Mail Order Catalog Reflected the Dark Side of America
The 1929 Johnson Smith catalog spoke volumes about American society
When English-born Alfred Johnson Smith relocated from Australia to the United States in 1914, he brought with him a novelty business that would become a national phenomenon. Establishing Johnson Smith & Co. in Chicago, Illinois, Smith became known for selling silly, amusing novelties via a mail order catalogue.
The Johnson Smith catalog, originally 64 pages, expanded almost ten times to 576 pages by 1923. Some 100,000 copies were printed. The 1929 edition of the catalog, consisting of over 760 pages, was preserved for posterity when it was reproduced in a hardcover edition by Chelsea House Publishers in 1970. In the book’s Introduction, Jean Shepherd writes:
“Today this catalog is just a very funny coffee-table curiosity, because we are still too close to the life and times it describes. In two hundred years it will be a truly significant historical and social document. It might well be the Rosetta stone of American culture.”
A catalog of and for the times
Traditional mail order catalogs, such as those produced by Sears Roebuck & Co., were compendiums of everyday essentials that could be ordered by ordinary…
