Lu Ann Jones' Gender, Race, and Itinerant Commerce in the Rural New South

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argument: peddlers, owners of "rolling stores" (301), and sales representatives for national companies (two in particular: W. T. Rawleigh Company and J. R. Watkins Medical Company, both Midwest-based). Describing these roles as they developed chronologically, Jones moves the reader from least corporate, in a sense, to most corporate. The peddler is the simplest form of traveling salesman, selling what he has to earn what he needs; he is an "independent entrepreneur"(301). Rolling store owners took to the road with goods to sell from their permanent locations elsewhere, extending their market. The next step was the rise of companies whose entire business model was structured around the homestead: J. R. Watkins Medical Company and W. T. Rawleigh Company drew not only droves of shoppers, but also recruited and trained salesmen. As the author develops her argument, it reads like a reflection of the rise of American capitalism as it became in the twentieth century. She then examines the ...

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