Corporate Calling Cards: Advertising Trade Cards and Logos in the United States, 1876-1890

Winner of the William M. Jones Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2009 American Culture Association Conference On May 10, 1876, the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia opened its doors to an excited and enthusiastic public. The Exposition marked the explosion of large-scale corporate capitalism and consumerism after the Civil War and functioned as both a self-congratulatory political event and a showcase for industrial capitalist progress in the United States. Exhibit organizers designed the program to highlight American progress as part of the commemoration of the Revolution, dividing the displays into departments such as manufacturing, textiles, furniture, tools, motors/transportation, engineering, public works, and graphic arts, and "intellectual, moral, and physical improvement." The fair introduced a host of new technologies and other developments that would have lasting impacts on the lives of Americans, including the telephone and various refrigeration processes. Exhibitors traveled from every corner of the country and abroad to present their information and products to fairgoers (Rydell 10-21). Many of them clamored for fairgoers' attention and trust, promoting unfamiliar brandname products such as Fleischmann's yeast and Libby's canned meats. These exhibitors distributed pocket-sized advertisements called trade cards - 3 x 5 in. lithographed cards with colorful images and descriptive text that authenticated the wares for sale with testimonials and expert advice. Visitors moved through the Exposition collecting these portable lithographs along with holiday greeting cards, calling cards (similar to today's business cards), and other printed materials from the fair. Indeed, the nation's centennial celebration marked the beginning of the widespread commercial use of trade cards and a popular cultural fascination with them as reflected in the art of scrapbooking. At his booth at the Philadelphia Exposition, lithographer Louis Prang distributed trade cards to the public along with his art prints, catalogs, and sample greeting cards. Traveling to the fair from Boston, Prang had learned the fundamental principles of color mixing, dyeing, printing, and engraving from his father, a Prussian textile printer. The young Prang opened his own lithographic firm in 1860 and began publishing chromolithographie art prints, calendars, and greeting cards before expanding his operation to produce advertising material in the early 1870s. Capitalizing on the growing popularity of trade cards in American culture, Prang developed the "stock" trade card (Figure 1), a blank card with a generic image and a space where a retailer could add his own information and location (McClinton 73-74). Many fairgoers saved these colorful cards alongside greeting cards and other printed ephemera as memorable souvenirs of the Exposition by pasting and preserving them in scrapbooks. Indeed, the 1876 fair marks a watershed in the popularity of scrapbooking as a leisure practice among middle-class consumers, women, and children as the moment when "stock cards" were introduced to the general public by Louis Prang. By the 1880s, trade cards were distributed by nearly every retailer across the United States and collected by countless Americans for scrapbook use (Jay 99). This study traces the use of stock and custom trade cards as advertisements from the introduction of stock cards at the 1876 Exposition to trade cards' decline as popular collectibles in the 1890s. The year 1876 marks a moment in the early formation and integration of the national market through newly formed transportation and communication networks, when mass production made possible competition between nationally marketed and locally produced goods, and when large-scale manufacturers realized that, in order to compete with local goods, they had to win the confidence of individual consumers. How did manufacturers authenticate their products to win over skeptical consumers? …