Creator
Preble House
Title
Maine Commercial Travelers' Association Banquet
Coverage
Portland, Maine
Date
January 1, 1887
Description
Traveling salesmen formed professional organizations, such as the Maine Commercial Travelers’ Association, for camaraderie and to address common business issues. By the late 1880s, there were somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 “drummers” in the United States—a number that seemed even larger because they were always on the move. The social ubiquity of the freewheeling salesmen was an unsettling development in a society with a strict moral code, as indicated by the cover illustration showing a rakish dude asking a young woman on the train whether the seat next to her is occupied.