General store - a wonderland

"Laura could have looked for weeks and not seen all the things that were in that store. She had not known there were so many things in the world." - Description of Pepin General Store, 1871 as written by Laura Ingalls Wilder in "Little House in the Big Woods."

The interior of the George Neher general store which once stood on the southeast corner of East Madison and North Barstow intersection. The clerk is Fred Froehling.

     The general store from the middle of the 19th century through the first 40 years of the 20th century was the mercantile, medical, social, political and even scholastic center of many of the towns. Regardless if they were the only one or it there were several as in the larger communities, they all had certain features in common.
     A person could buy anything for the house or farm: coal oil, plows, all sorts of clothing, food, chicken feed, clothes pins, chewing tobacco, seeds for garden or crop.
     Many of the patented medical remedies of the day could be found. For instance, pareric, castor oil, camphor, epsom salts and in later years Lydia Pinkham's Famous Female remedy as well as medical home advice books.

Pot-bellied stove center of discussions

     The pot-bellied stove with the black pipe hanging by wires from the ceiling was the dissemination point for all gossip (good or bad) of the male tongues which in some earlier stores were loosened a bit by a trip to the backroom to the little barrel of spirits with a cup attached by a string.
     Meanwhile the women folk held their conversations across bolts of calico and half-filled cracker barrels, not being admitted to the lounging spot of the gentlemen.
      When war issues and elections were the major subject, local gossip was put aside by men and pot-bellied stoves became the political center, also.

Place to buy slates and pencils

     The store was the place where families bought text books for schools if the family was fortunate enough to be able to buy new books. Also it was the place to obtain slates and slate pencils.
     And if there was an extra penny, perhaps, it purchased a striped peppermint stick.
     Generally, one side of the store was devoted to groceries and the other had shelves piled high with dry goods. On the grocery side hams and bacon and anything else that could be strung from the ceiling was, including such items as onions.
     On the shelves behind were jars and canned goods when they became available, candy canisters, spices, and crowding the floor were bags and barrels and boxes of flour, crackers, potatoes, pickles, salt fish and anything else that somebody might want.

Coffee mill occupied corners

     A big coffee mill usually occupied one corner. Along the other side the arrangement began with the ladies' section with bolts of fabric, dressmakers supplies and pattern books, some underwear, shoes and boots, bonnets high in boxes on the shelf and then the men's wear. There was always more ready to war men's clothing because they required work clothes as well as dress items.
     Crowded into open spaces were housewares and hardwares. There were plow shares, axe handles, shovels, knives, perhaps a cook stove and pots, pans and kettles, lamps and chimneys, milk buckets, guns and ammunition.

1887 sales ledger is revealing

Sales ledger from 1880. For larger image, click here!

     A sales ledger from a general stores, Tuesday, April 5, 1887 read:
     Dried apples 15 cents a pound; 100 pounds of flour, $2.20; matches, 25 cents; can of corn, 13 cents; cigarettes, 10 cents; gunny sack, 10 cents; spool of thread, a nickel; two yards of denim, 26 cents; box of cigars, $2; children's socks, 10 cents; half bushel of potatoes, 28 cents; one peck of bagas, 9 cents; dozen eggs, 15 cents; can of plums, 14 cents; packet of needles, 5 cents; half-gallon kraut, 13 cents; half-gallon of oil, 9 cents; and a handkerchief, 5 cents.
     The merchant's cash sales for that day were $41.21.
     Fresh eggs or produce were often taken in trade.
     June 9, 1887, a merchant's ledger notes, that a man brought in 14 3/4 pounds of butter which he sold to the storekeeper for $2.65 and in turn he purchased $2.07 worth of goods.
     On June 15, 1887, a man was credited for 166 pounds of potatoes for which he received $1.64. Another brought 12 1/2 quarts of berries, receiving $1.50.
     A teamster from a logging camp, Ludwig Christensen, received credit for $39.52 for 46 1/2 days work in the woods.

He spent part of it as such:

     A suit of clothes, $14.25; an overcoat, $7.50; a hat, $2.10; two pair drawers, $2.10; two undershirts, $2.10; three pair socks, 45 cents; pair of boots, $2.50; pair of shoes, $2.50; 10 yards of flannel, $3.30; four spools of thread, 20 cents; a card of buttons, 8 cents; five pounds of sugar, $1; and a peck of apples, 40 cents. These and a few other items totaled almost the entire $39.
     As the years moved along, the demand for more products created a need for more specialized stores and the general store started to fade from the picture, particularly in the larger cities.
     However, specialization did not take them all out as some still continue today to sell hardware, groceries and general merchandise under the same roof.

Modernization brings changes

     The advent of refrigeration made some changes in the merchandising business as purchases from local farm wives ceased because produce could be shipped long distances by refrigerated rail cars and trucks.
     Probably one of the alterations in merchandising was the advent of the packaging industry. Gone is the merchant reaching into a bin and counting out cookies, potatoes and peanuts. In the hardware line, even nails and small amounts of nuts and bolts are prepackaged and metal bins of nails, in many instances, are a thing of the past.
     The self-service store, built on mass sales, also replace the day when an individual clerk waited on the customer, going from one section of the store to the other, while the shopper read his or her list.

Cash register replace figuring

     Also gone are the days when the clerk marked the items down on a folded paper bag or on a age of the little lined account books, which were kept in order in an old wooden cheese box on the back counter.
     Having disappeared are the overhead fans, giving way to air conditioners; the old fashioned cash register with the flip up price numbers giving way to computer priced marks read by an electric eye on a conveyor; the old money chutes to the cash register in back of the store have given away to the credit card, and except in a few corner grocery stores, the personal acknowledgment and small talk about the family, has given way to the rapid, machine-like, but very efficient check out line.

- Joy Hoffman

Extracted from the Eau Claire Leader Telegram
Special Publication, Our Story 'The Chippewa Valley and Beyond', published 1976
Used with permission.