Although the company didn't include recent immigrants in the same class as native-born Americans in the 1910s,1920s and 1930s,its perception of immigrants changed considerably in the early 1920s after the Division of Commercial Research made a study of the Pilsen district of Chicago.Parlin described the Pilsen area as populated by Bohemians,Poles,Magyars,Swedes and other nationalities,“each with a racial consciousness.This district is not only foreign itself;it is surrounded by districts only less foreign than itself.”The company sold few magazines in the area,yet the researchers found that Pilsen residents bought just as many nationally advertised canned goods as did residents of such affluent areas as Jackson Park and Evanston.Parlin and his associates reasoned that immigrants first shopped at stores that stocked products from their home countries,but then gravitated toward branded goods to make themselves feel more American.Word about advertised products spread by word of mouth through the streets,Parlin wrote.Someone in a neighborhood might read a magazine and then pass information on to a friend.Or a child or an acquaintance might work in another section of town and bring back news about products they had seen others use.“Upon the mind of the American,accustomed every hour to learn from the printed page,the manufacturer's message quickly registers an impression.Upon the mind of the laborer,accustomed to heeding only verbal orders,the spoken word is potent.The foreign laborer is trained to heed what people say.He buys,for the most part,what someone tells him to buy.The advertising medium that reaches him is the spoken recommendation of his neighbors.”Parlin,untitled address to Western Company,type,Feb.16,1923,CP,Box 149,Folder 42;Parlin,“National Advertising and How It Fits in With Local Advertising for the Jobber and Dealer,”type,June 4,1924,Folder 49(A published version of the speech appeared in The Reminder,a monthly publication of the Electrical Supply Jobbers Association.);Parlin,“Address,”type,May 5,1924.Folder 47.Also see various charts and information in“Dope Book.”
The key observation,regardless of the explanation,was that immigrants did indeed buy.The people in the foreign districts were still discounted to a great degree,defined in disparaging terms,in part because they didn't read Curtis magazines.They couldn't be valued nearly as much as those in the affluent sections of town who were loyal subscribers.The old biases and fears about foreigners didn't disappear when Curtis Publishing discovered that they actually bought consumer goods,but in the eyes of Parlin and his associates,immigrants were seen in a slightly better light.They consumed,and better yet,they consumed advertised goods.That,in Curtis'view,made them a little less foreign and a little more American.Curtis'definition of a“trickle-down”market extended beyond the Pilsen district of Chicago,and was a key element of its definition of rural America in the 1910s,1920s and 1930s.Like other publishers around the country,Curtis began to devote increasing attention to rural areas in the 1910s and 1920s.Mostly neglected in favor of city markets before then,rural America was increasingly seen as offering the greatest potential for sales and representing,in many respects,the true national market.
“The lifting of the farm market to a new plane of earning and to a better appreciation of good merchandise seems to us the most encouraging factor not only for 1920 but for years to come,”Parlin said in 1920.Digests of Principal Research Department Studies,vol.1(1911-1925),pp.2-3;and vol.2(1926-1940),p.2.Curtis papers,Box 118;Parlin,Basic Facts of Prosperity in 1920(Philadelphia:Curtis Publishing Company,1920),Curtis papers,Box 148,Folder 13.Also see,for example,“Retail Business,Sabetha,Kansas,”which breaks sales down for 1919,1921,1922;“Curtis Circulation”shows map of Sabetha,along with each residence and who subscribes;“Growth of Incomes,”which charts income growth based on income tax returns from 1915 to 1921;and“Farms and Farm Wealth,”which broke down the country into regions and states and charted income and assets.All are from the Curtis“Dope Book.”To better understand the dynamics of rural America,Curtis sent a team of more than a dozen people from its advertising department to Sabetha,Kansas,in 1920.Sabetha was chosen as a“typical”agricultural community from among hundreds of“progressive”communities that Curtis considered in Kansas,Nebraska,Illinois,Wisconsin,Iowa and Missouri.The Curtis representatives visited all the businesses and all but twenty of the 1,321 homes in a 144-mile radius of Sabetha.Through interviews and observations,the company assembled a broad study of consumption,one that tried to understand the importance of such things as merchandising,national advertising,community leaders,brand names and the automobile on purchases in a small farm town.Still at the center,though,were Curtis magazines.
In writing the study,Parlin concluded that nine out of ten of the community leaders,whose opinions were seen as essential to the spread of any consumer product,read Curtis magazines.The Post,the Journal and Country Gentleman reached these upper-class people-people who were“materially above the average”and had such things as indoor bathrooms,vacuum cleaners and automobiles.These types of people not only read the Curtis magazines,but they purchased or asked for the products advertised in the magazines.Others in the community,he said,looked to these leaders as role models and usually emulated their purchasing decisions.
