pedlars and peddlars and hawkers and canvassers and mashers

If there is one thing differentiating America from the rest of the Western World, it is the way that sales and salesmanship became commercialized and systematized in the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Walter Friedman, of Harvard Business School, tells that fascinating story in a recent book, Birth of a Salesman (Harvard, 2004). Along the way he introduces several terms to describe these salesmen. When we combine with these with other terms I have introduced elsewhere (here and here), we have a vocabulary of sales emerging at that time. When we add to this the law of sales, which became codified in the 1906 Uniform Sales Act (essays begin here), we have a whole new reality entering the American scene. What is fascinating to me, however, are the way that terms, which entered into our national vocabulary in those days, have created what I call mini-cultural pictures, or images in our mind, giving us a large storehouse of these mental images for use in conversation, writing and thinking in 2006. The aim of this and next few essays is to coax meaning from some of these terms, so that vivid pictures are created in our minds.

The Terms

I have already talked about jugglers and mountebanks. These were individuals whose work involved deception, from the perspective of the good people who make state laws. Thus, NY statutes from the early 19th century criminalized the things that jugglers and mountebanks did. Different from these folks were peddlers and hawkers, whom PA, for example, wanted to control not so much by criminalizing their conduct but by state regulation. If you were a hawker or peddler, you had to pay an annual licence fee to the county to peddle your wares. Then, as we will see, we have hucksters and canvassers, knights of the grip and other individuals (knockers and mashers) who had something to do with sales or with the life of a salesman on the road. And, along the way, we will run into many, many other words. Let's begin our journey by meeting the peddlers.

Pedlar/Peddler

Our modern spelling of the term ("peddler") only goes back to the late 19th century. Before that time a person who traveled around carrying his goods in a pack was known as a "pedlar." But when the word "peddler" became differentiated in spelling from "pedlar" (mostly US usage, the OED assures us), the concept took on a sinister air. The first attestation of "peddler" from 1872 defines it as "an itinerant counterfeit money-seller." By the late 1920s peddler had taken on the slang connotation of a drug bootlegger. Eugene O'Neill, in his 1959 work Hughie could say, "Take my tip, pal, and don't never try to buy from a dope peddler." "Peddler" also could take on a wider meaning in the 20th century as someone who engaged in selling door-to-door.

But let's return to the pre-1872 days, when "peddler" was spelled "pedlar," and when a "pedlar" had something to do with selling lawful commodities. Often combined with the word "hawker" or "petty chapman," a pedlar was one who went from door to door with goods carried in a pack. By the late 19th century, when all knowledge was becoming systematized, the London Daily News could say: "A hawker is a man who travels about selling goods with a horse and cart or van. A pedlar carries his goods himself." The word "pedlar" goes back hundreds of years before that, and all the great authors used it. Shakespeare has it (Winter's Tale): "O Master: if you did but hear the Pedler at the door, you would never dance again after a Tabor and Pipe." Or, from Milton, "Not unlike the Fox, that turning Pedlar, open'd his pack of War before the Kid." But even though the term had seemingly a neutral connotation in these usages, it could be associated with more questionable activities, as when Jonathan Swift said, in Gulliver's Travels (1726): "The first seemed to be an Assembly of Heroes and Demy-Gods; the other a Knot of Pedlars, Pick-pockets, High-way-men and Bullies."

But let's dig a bit deeper into the word "pedlar." The OED says that it is apparently a variation of pedder, and pedder is of uncertain origin (why isn't it just derived from the Latin "pes, pedis," having to do with a person that goes around on "foot"?), but means "a person who carries goods about for sale." Let's get lost in some words. A pedder, then, carries a ped. And, a ped, which is attested as early as the 14th century, means "a wicker pannier; a hamper with a lid, used to carry fish and other produce." From a 16th century Essex will, we have, "I will that my 3 horses, my stock of money, with My peds, baskets and furniture for the horses.." A 1661 quotation introduces us to yet more words: "Dorsers are Peds or Panniers carried on the backs of Horses, on which Haglers used to ride and carry their Commodities."

Oh My, More Words

My, we really are geting far afield now but let's push on. A pannier is a basket or container used for transportation, and I think we can see the word "bread" in this word, but I don't want to go too far afield with exploring pannier. A dorser was originally known as a dosser, and could mean, among other things, "a basket carried on the back, or slung in pairs over the back of a beast of burden; a pannier." I love the quotation from Thomas More: "The devil..made him to fall in the diche with his docer, and breake all his egges." Now I know where Bill Cosby got the line!

So, we have dorsers and peds and panniers and pedders and pedlars. But the 1661 quotation also introduces us to "Haglers," and I can't resist following that path. We will return to hawkers and hucksters, no doubt, but what was a hagler?

A Concluding Word on Hagler

There is no listing in the OED for "haglar" but there are entries, of course, for haggler and haggle. When we enter into the hagler's world, however, we learn yet more terms. As early as 1602, the word "hagler" was used to describe "an intinerant dealer; a huckster; a "cadger." "The open Streets..ought to be used..for open Passage..and not for Hucksters, Pedlars, and Haglers to sit to sell their Wares in..." And, this sense of haggler/hagler as a dealer in goods continued until the 19th century. From 1700 we have: "A Hagler--one that Buys of the Country-Folks, and Sells in the Market, and goes from Door to Door." By 1851 a "haggler" is a "middle-man who attends in the fruit and vegetable markets and buys of the salesment to sell again to the retain dealer..." But we know a haggler as someone who seems to, well, haggle, which has the sense of bargain or "stickle" in making a bargain. Let's turn to that, as we continue our odyssey of words.

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