This week’s featured video was produced by Heavy Steel Marvels to share the story of how Sears & Roebuck Catalog orders revolutionized rural America. Farm families in the late 1800s and much of the 1900s had very limited access to purchasing machinery, implements, and household goods. Local stores could order things but often with significant markups. The Sears Catalog was to rural Americans in the 1900s what the Internet offers to rural farm families of today. Access to mass produced goods at a reasonable price, that were shipped directly to the farm with limited retail markup.
In 1886, Richard Sears started selling watches by mail. Within a decade, his catalog would become known as “The Farmer’s Bible” – a 532-page lifeline that brought the modern world to isolated farmhouses across America. From cream separators that cost a fraction of competitors’ prices to the stunning Graham-Bradley tractor – marketed as “the most beautiful tractor ever built” – Sears gave farmers access to equipment and goods they could never afford at local stores.
Watch the video to hear the interesting history of the Sears and Roebuck Company and what it meant to rural Americans.
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If you enjoyed this video, you might want to check the other 350+ YouTube videos highlighted in the Friday Feature Archive
If you come across an interesting, inspiring, humorous or innovative video related to agriculture, please send in a link, so we can share it with our readers. Use the share button from the YouTube or Facebook video you like and send the link via email to: Doug Mayo
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