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“The Biggest Small-Town Store in America”: Independent Retailers and the Rise of Consumer Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Vicki Howard
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Abstract

The case study of Bresee's Department Store in Oneonta, New York, suggests that small-town department stores were not necessarily fully “modern” by the early twentieth century. This article demonstrates how modern, big-store, business methods came later and documents how earlier modes of trade, such as credit and bartering, persisted into the early twentieth century, even in non-rural, northern contexts. Preliminary findings suggest that eliminating the urban bias in much historiography by including small-town retailing practices may lead to a later periodization of American consumer society.

Type
Articles
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 2008 , pp. 457 - 486
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

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