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How did the mail order catalog improve life.?

Well okay, i know that the 1st mail order catalog was created by Aaron Montgomery Ward. Correct me if I'm wrong???!!! Anyway, what did the mail order catalog do to improve life? How did it help? Thanks in advance. P.S I'll choose u 4 best answer if u can tell me how the morse code improved life too.

Public Comments

1. Brought many more products to many more customers who otherwise wouldn't have access. Communication over long distance's was only possible, at first, with Morris's code.
2. The mail order catalog brought the consumer to the merchandise without the need to travel long distances. Many things were not available to people in the many small townships back then unless they traveled by railroad, buggy, or on horseback sometimes taking days to get to the nearest city. The heyday of the mail-order business occurred between the 1890s and the 1910s, when it was dominated by Montgomery Ward and Sears. During this period, these companies became two of the largest business enterprises in the United States. Wards, which opened several mail-order branches across the country during the first part of the twentieth century, was employing over seven thousand men and women in the Chicago area by 1910. By 1913, Wards was selling about $40 million worth of goods per year. Even more astounding than the rapid growth of Wards was the rise of Sears. The firm of Sears, Roebuck & Co., which settled in Chicago in 1895, was the creation of a Minnesotan named Richard W. Sears. After getting his start in the 1880s by selling watches through the mail, Sears (whose partner Alvah C. Roebuck started as a watch repairman) established a general mail-order company along the lines of Wards. Only a few years after its birth, Sears overtook Wards as the leading mail-order company. Like Wards, Sears issued giant catalogs and succeeded in attracting orders for a variety of goods from hundreds of thousands of rural consumers. By 1905, Sears had about nine thousand employees, and its annual sales approached $50 million. Much of Sears's success was overseen by Julius Rosenwald, who became a partner in the company in 1895 and became its president after Richard Sears retired in 1909. By 1914, when Sears had branches in Dallas and Seattle in addition to its central operation in Chicago, the company's annual mail-order sales had surpassed $100 million. I hope this answered your question, and good luck!