Although contemporary Americans often view peddling as an activity unique to the United States, it was an economic endeavor whose history long predates its emergence in the United States. Paul J. Uselding points out that “Peddlers were operating in England in the early part of the sixteenth century” as well as even earlier throughout the Mediterranean regions (Uselding 1975, 56). However, this mercantile activity quickly took hold in the American colonies as a method of supplying people’s needs, especially those who lived too far from cities and towns to acquire products easily.
Painting by J. N. Ehninger, 1853, depicting an itinerant peddler. The peddler appeared in narrative folklore and novels in the nineteenth century, typically as a trickster figure who entertained with jokes and stories in order to increase sales. Often his merchandise was of dubious quality, despite the peddler’s claims to the contrary. (Corbis)
In general, Yankee peddlers were types of traveling salesmen who operated during the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. To call them salesmen alone, however, would be inaccurate, as these individuals performed a variety of tasks apart from the sale of goods. As Uselding states, the peddler in America “carried an assortment of ‘tryflinges’ or ‘Yankee notions’: pins, needles, hooks and eyes, scissors, razors, combs, buttons, spoons, small hardware, books, paper, cotton goods, lace, perfume, etc.” (Uselding 1975, 57). Moreover, these peddlers could carry even further specialized goods or provide repair work or other craft-related services. In some cases, peddlers were not so much independent traveling retailers but instead, they worked on behalf of shop owners and other craftsmen. One button-making factory in Waterbury, Connecticut, established its product distribution through an extensive use of peddlers during the eighteenth century.
From a cultural standpoint, the Yankee peddler would come to embody a certain mythical quality in the way this individual traveled across the country seeking to forge a living on the road—emblematic in some small way of the feelings of Manifest Destiny that would take root in the nineteenth century but were certainly growing with the young nation’s increasing sense of independence. Yet, this view was not always so romantic. Priscilla Carrington Kline points out that there are two dueling notions of the Yankee peddler often at odds with each other informing popular beliefs of these traveling traders. On one hand, she relates how the peddler could be seen as leaving “his customers convinced and satisfied with their share of the bargain, but he usually managed to clear out after finishing the deal,” implying a certain devious and dishonest aspect of the peddler (Kline 1939, 81). This no doubt informed popular notions of the Yankee peddler as a sort of trickster figure in the folklore that would emerge from early American culture. On the other hand, these persons also “suffered at the hands of their customer” when people would refuse to pay their bills when given credit or claim they were sold faulty goods from these traveling merchants—and the local authorities were far less invested in protecting a stranger than they were their neighbors (Kline 1939, 84). Still, the general impression of these individuals was that they were tricksters who were not always honest and trustworthy.
One of the better-known examples of the Yankee peddler being woven into the folklore of American culture can be seen in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy from 1821. This work portrayed Harvey Birch as both peddler and spy as it proceeded to “perpetuate the peddler myth of the amiable vagabond with his bag of tricks” (Fink 1974, 137). The Birches and Sam Slicks of American folklore (another huckster-styled con man) were but one sort of portrayal of the peddler whom writers such as Herman Melville and Mark Twain would draw upon in their own writings. There were also more Romantic notions of the friendly, traveling storyteller who provided services to families, entertained children, and were viewed favorably, such as Washington Irving’s Brother Jonathan. This was a character who was often portrayed in periodicals as “dynamic, clever, unlettered, and above all sincere … an ebullient practical joker” who was often seen as “a lout, but he was our lout” (Anderson 2004, 14).
The Hobo
The hobo, sometimes called a “Gentleman of the Open Road,” has, since the nineteenth century, offered a sort of antihero in opposition to the thrift, hard work, and self-sacrifice associated with the Puritan work ethic. The hobo lives a free and unfettered life, rides the rails wherever he pleases, and rejects the wage-serfdom of Industrial Age America. A whole branch of hobo folklore has blossomed around this figure, including so-called “hobo signs” indicating charitable and uncharitable households; stories of a “hobo brotherhood,” a quasi-Masonic secret society of the free life; and even an annual Hobo Ball or Hobo Convention, including the coronation of a Hobo King and Queen. The brutal realities of homelessness asserted themselves in the face of the common American during the depths of the Great Depression, however, and the popularity of the hobo icon faded. It has never disappeared, however, and to this day it provides an antithesis to the Horatio Alger myth, an instructive counterpoint to an American dream too often focused upon crass materialism.
C. Fee
While the Yankee peddler served a practical purpose prior to the rise of mass marketing and distribution of goods in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and the ever-expanding railroad system, the independent purveyor who roamed the landscape soon disappeared with the emergence of catalog sales, chain-store retailing, and eventually online purchasing. Nevertheless, the peddler is a well-known figure in early American folklore and represents the wandering, entrepreneurial spirit expressed in a variety of ways in American literature and popular culture.
Forrest C. Helvie
See also Appleseed, Johnny; Connecticut Yankee; Folk Medicine; Irving, Washington; Sam Slick; Twain, Mark
Further Reading
Anderson, Ann. 2004. Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Fink, Robert. 1974. “Harvey Birch: The Yankee Peddler as an American Hero.” New York Folklore Quarterly 30 (2): 137–152.
Hinman, Mary-Lou. 1975. The Yankee Peddler: His Role in American Folklore and Fiction. Storrs: University of Connecticut Press.
Kline, Priscilla Carrington. 1939. “New Light on the Yankee Peddler.” New England Quarterly 12 (1): 80–98.
Rourke, Constance. 1986. American Humor: A Study of the National Character. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida.
Uselding, Paul J. 1975. “Peddling in the Antebellum Economy: Precursors of Mass-Marketing or a Start in Life?” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 34 (1): 55–66.