The beginning of modern business.
The record of the growth of industry from the earliest times – from the “one voice” sales presentation of the itinerant peddler or the huckster talking his wares – is a history, step by step, of expanding means of communication. Man’s first step was the development of his vocal grunts and growls of the Stone Age into a spoken language by which he was able to convey his thoughts to his fellow men. He then learned to form characters in writing on clay, on stone, and eventually on papyrus. At a later date, paper, which originated in China, came into universal use as a medium of communicating. Thus, man slowly developed his system of communication which is so essential to the continued progress of business as well as of all forms of civilisation.
The crude pictures characters which were hung up as signs in front of the inns in the Middle Agers were in time adopted by the peddler merchants who had left the roads and settled in the villages. These sings were used by these merchants to publicize their wares locally, and were displayed in front of the merchants’ homes in which were combined store and living quarters.
Even up to the turn of the present century, business in the United States and Canada had not developed much beyond the localised activities of small proprietorships or partnership ventures which capitalised the skills and the ideas of the men who organised them. These small business ventures found their markets largely with neighbours and fellow townsmen.
Consequently, the material needs of the community were supplied primarily by numerous small business ventures engaged in simple manufacturing, distributing and retailing – one cylinder businesses. The technique of directing such enterprise, selling the output, and keeping pace with growing demand, was also quite simple. Orders were transmitted by word of mouth, customers