Miscellaneous
Not only can Sears catalogs be used to study fashion history, body image, gender studies, and so on, but they can also tell us more about what image Sears, and other companies like it, wanted to share with the public. All of the catalogs here are limited edition – given to libraries every few years to be preserved for their “interest and value in the years ahead.” In the 1941-2 catalog, they included an insert on the front page concerning taxes, price increases, and regulations on certain materials, as a response to the war effort. The 1961-2 catalog contained an application for US Savings Bonds. And the 1956-7 edition advertised a membership to the Young Peoples Book Club, with a “sound educational plan” informing the children’s choice of books. Sears proclaimed that “what a child reads and enjoys today can have a profound influence upon the kind of adult he becomes tomorrow – his choice of careers, the social attitudes he develops, the integrity he brings to marriage and his life’s work.” This is quite striking when considering the various social attitudes and heated political debates surrounding the question of what children should be reading today.
